Don't panic! Courier will no longer "burst"

The world today is in a new era of major development and transformation. Engineering construction has become a powerful driving force for the socio-economic development of countries and a weapon of competition for countries. Decision-making errors, delays, overruns, risks and other issues in project management have also become important topics in scientific research.

Whether it is a logistics express that is closely related to people's livelihood or a large-scale public infrastructure construction with far-reaching impacts, the main content of the project is becoming more and more diverse, and the management objectives are more multi-dimensional and multi-scale. These are all more important for management organizers. High demands.

Over the years, Chinese scientists have used mathematical statistical tools to support economic management, integrated reductionism and holism into systems theory, guided the construction of major national engineering projects, and formed integrated advantages through the interdisciplinary, personnel, resource and achievement sharing and other means.

This edition of the Natural Science Foundation of China will summarize the research progress of major projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and show its achievements.

Photograph by Wang Shouyang's work group during work discussion

■Cheng Weijia, a trainee reporter of this newspaper

With the end of the "Double Eleven" shopping carnival in 2019, the express delivery industry has also ushered in a peak period of logistics. Wang Shouyang, a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Systems Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is also rapidly carrying a digital "storm" looking at the endless couriers and piles of cardboard boxes in the community.

How to carry out traffic deployment so that the goods can reach the consumers faster? How to solve the environmental pollution caused by the huge amount of freight? With the support of the National Natural Science Foundation's major project "Research on Modern Logistics Management for the Coordinated Development of Economy, Society, and the Environment", Wang Shouyang and a group of logistics scientists and management scientists have worked behind the scenes for many years to carry out fruitful systematic research.

Now, they have submitted a satisfactory answer with a series of data.

Has your courier arrived?

This year's "Double Eleven", Wang Shouyang did not buy any goods online. Compared with the temptation of promotion, he is more concerned about the logistics management problem behind the huge orders. According to the forecast released by the State Post Bureau, from November 11 to 18, the express mail processing business volume of the express delivery industry reached 2.8 billion, a substantial increase from last year.

The reporter saw at the nearby courier outlets that a small desk was piled with piles of bills, and some outlets even overflowed to the door. "Before the 20th is the peak logistics period, it takes about a week to get the goods to hand. Has your courier arrived?" a sorter who asked not to be named told China Science Daily.

Why does express delivery become "slow" delivery? In Wang Shouyang's view, this is the result of multiple factors.

"China's transportation is well connected, but the coordination ability is not good. Waterway, highway, railway and aviation belong to different management departments, and a generally recognized cooperative operation mechanism has not yet been formed." He introduced that at present more than 80% of domestic cargo transportation still depends on highways The poor connection between the port and the railway restricts the sea-rail combined transport, and the multi-path networked transport capacity is very poor.

As a carrier of order transportation, major logistics companies are duty-bound. Although my country's logistics enterprises have made rapid progress in innovation and management, the technological and innovation capabilities of many logistics companies are still clearly insufficient.

It is understood that there are 10.502 million freight vehicles operating in the country, and 87% are mainly individual transport households. The operation mode of "Soldiers and Courage" has caused various kinds of disorderly parking and dispersal. More than 90% of logistics companies carry more than 90% of the freight volume of highways. Many freight companies have less than two vehicles and less than 5 tons of vehicles, and management is inefficient.

"The total assets of 26 logistics companies listed in China are 15 billion yuan, and the listed assets of only one logistics company in the United States amount to 20 billion yuan. What is this concept?" Wang Shouyang reported a series of data without thinking.

The phenomenon of inadequate logistics services is worth considering. The high consumer complaints involve up to 280 companies. But for consumers, the most important thing is when the goods are shipped. In some megacities, huge order demand and lagging supply demand have created serious contradictions.

For example, in 2012, although the "Double Eleven" made the e-commerce players profitable, due to the large online transaction volume on the day, the shipment volume far exceeded the carrying capacity of the logistics company, and many logistics companies burst their positions, resulting in Express delivery has become a criticism.

"China's logistics industry is a mirror that provides a wealth of research topics for the academic community from all sides." Wang Shouyang said. In 2013, the National Natural Science Foundation of China launched a major research project on "Modern Logistics Management Research for the Coordinated Development of Economy, Society, and the Environment." Wang Shouyang led the team to undertake the project research work.

He pointed out that the overall goal of this major project is to create a "resource-saving, environment-friendly" logistics management theory of sustainable development to meet the real needs of national economy and people's livelihood.

Three-pronged logistics management

However, behind the prosperity of the e-commerce economy, it is not easy to establish a comprehensive logistics strategy system. "China's specific reality determines that logistics system research must consider Chinese characteristics, and foreign advanced business models and management research results can be used for reference, but they cannot be copied exactly." Zhao Lindu, a professor at the School of Economics and Management of Southeast University, told the China Science Journal.

To this end, the project team conducted research and analysis on it from the economic perspective, social perspective and environmental perspective.

In terms of economy, in order to improve the efficiency of logistics operations and enterprise operations, and enhance the competitiveness of enterprises, many scholars have developed a comprehensive forecast model based on TEI@I methodology for logistics innovation capabilities and policy ratings and design, which has predicted the global TOP20 ports over the years China’s container throughput and China’s TOP20 airport passenger and freight volumes, and on this basis, put forward policy recommendations on relevant logistics innovation models.

In terms of society, the project team’s research on logistics management mainly focused on urban logistics management and logistics quality and safety control. They studied the temporal and spatial evolution of Beijing’s commercial logistics, food cold chain logistics and warehouse rental prices, and discussed Beijing The impact of the logistics and distribution center on Beijing's environment, transportation and distribution costs and efficiency.

In terms of the environment, the project team carried out systematic research from the perspectives of reducing carbon emissions and building green logistics, including energy consumption and pollution-intensive emissions caused by the logistics industry, including a logistics system operation model based on carbon emissions measurement and consideration of carbon trading. Supply chain decision-making model, low-carbon strategy evolution game model under complex network, reverse logistics network design and channel selection model, supply chain network equilibrium and carbon supply-constrained fresh supply chain network optimization model.

"We used various data from 2008 to 2012 in Beijing to calculate the logistics index. It was found that the logistics input index, logistics scale index, logistics development index and logistics efficiency index showed a steady growth trend during these five years." School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University Professor Zhang Juliang said that this shows that the logistics output input ratio is increasing, and logistics is making greater and greater contributions to Beijing's economic society.

Mathematical support

Modern logistics management is closely related to economics and other disciplines. When a reporter asked Wang Shouyang why he devoted himself to such a subject with the liberal arts, his point of view was: "This is an interdisciplinary field. In fact, the study of modern management and economics Need to master the necessary mathematical tools, especially the knowledge of mathematical statistics."

Wang Shouyang introduced that when considering and studying problems, it is required to have a logically rigorous theoretical analysis model and empirical testing through quantitative analysis methods, that is, it is necessary to fully understand what specific conditions are necessary for a conclusion to be established.

As a result, basic mathematics and computer science have become one of the most important analytical tools in modern management and economics research. For example, quantitative analysis methods such as complex network models, dynamic programming models, and game theory models can be used to provide solutions to the dynamic allocation of resources in logistics networks.

He introduced that the use of these theoretical methods can effectively guide the solution of practical problems. At the same time, many management problems in reality also provide materials and research motivation for the innovation of quantitative analysis tools.

In terms of applied research on major research projects, the project team has collaborated with the business community to make a number of important demonstration results, such as establishing a full-process logistics information solution, and proposing normal temperature logistics optimization operation/cold chain logistics overall quality Management and other logistics innovation management systems, and a number of retail logistics operation management technologies have reached the international advanced level.

"Under the guidance of the system, a number of KPI indicators have led the country, achieving an average daily shipment of 25,000 square meters of warehouses of 300,000 boxes, the average sorting time of a single store only takes 7 seconds, one core per day or even two per day New heights in the industry." Wang Shouyang said.

In 2017, the project team launched a new generation of one-stop retail intelligent logistics/supply chain information one-stop solution, China's first large-scale robotic automatic intelligent sorting physical retail logistics center went online. On December 28, 2018, a more comprehensive and advanced smart logistics center was launched, and it was running in four large modern retail logistics systems distributed in Zhejiang, Hong Kong, Shandong, and Hubei at the same time in just one day.

Over the years, the project team has promoted theoretical innovation with applied research. They have cooperated with related companies to create Sugu supermarket food safety research and test demonstration platform, Jiangsu Jiuzhou Tong drug safety research and test demonstration platform, and their results have been unanimously agreed by the cooperation units. Praise, but also produced a number of influential theoretical research work, published more than 300 academic papers in internationally renowned journals.

What is the future development of logistics? Big data and artificial intelligence may point us to a very important direction.

Wang Shouyang introduced that both domestic and international, logistics management needs to use artificial intelligence technology combined with big data to better serve economic and social development.

"China's logistics industry will achieve overtaking in corners and soon rank among the world's advanced level. Some logistics companies will lead the development of world logistics technology and logistics management. At the same time, China will also produce more international leaders in logistics management theory and method systems. Research achievements." When talking about the future of China's logistics industry, Wang Shouyang is full of confidence.