JD Logistics: Technology and New Trend of Unmanned Vehicle Deliveries

by Siyi Zhao

JD Logistics' Qiang Wang, Head of Intelligent Supply Chain Platfrom, participated in the 2021 CNBC East Tech West on Dec. 1 in Guangzhou, discussing digitalization has become a novel engine to ignite the optimization of supply chain so as to reduce logistics costs and improve service efficiency and user experience.

At the panel about the acceleration of digitalization, Wang shared his perspective with two peers, WeChat Pay's Maofeng Lei and Dada Group's Jun Yang. Wang stated, "digitalization is the backbone under the unprecedented changes of the century alongside the best solution to balance the contradiction among user experience, efficiency and cost. For example, with its accumulated experience in supply chain and logistics infrastructure, especially in the fields of operation automation, operation digitization and decision intelligence, JD Logistics' continuous exploration has manifested and accelerated the digitalization process of the whole industry."

East Tech West, an annual global technology conference hosted by CNBC, brings together those at the cutting edge of the technology industry and leading investors from across the world to navigate the industry's development through tech innovation towards a post-pandemic future.

When asked about the impact of digitalization on China's economic development, Wang contended that digitalization is the momentum when seeking for things beyond people's experience and recognition, " consumption used to be decided by big-scale and rough production, while in our era, production is driven by small-scale and exquisite consumption. This kind of model requires digitalization."

Mr. Qiang Wang (second to the right) spoke on the panel discussion

Since its comprehensive transformation into technology in early 2017, JD has invested nearly RMB 75 billion yuan in R&D of technology. JD Logistics has invested heavily in research and development over the years, in which it independently developed a variety of logistics automations, such as shuttle system, AGVs (automated ground vehicles), and other autonomous delivery vehicles, significantly improving the efficiency in warehousing, transportation, sorting and distribution. Besides, with the digitalization in warehousing, transportation and order management systems, JD realizes intelligent decision-making in areas such as sales forecasting, commodity distribution planning and supply chain network optimization through algorithms.

JD Logistics is the first company in China to apply self-driving to the actual scenarios of delivery. During Singles Day Grand Promotion, JD Logistics deployed nearly 400 autonomous delivery vehicles in more than 25 cities across the country, which tripled the delivery orders by unmanned vehicles from last year, and played an irreplaceable role in the process of contactless deliveries.

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