AI's future vision in the logistics industry

Faced with this test paper, the logistics industry has handed out a good answer in the past 10 years. From 2009 to 2018, the number of orders on Double Eleven increased from 260,000 to 1.042 billion, the parcel receipt time was shortened from 1-2 weeks to 2.6 days, and the phenomenon of "popping" was significantly reduced. Behind this achievement is the accumulation and development of the logistics industry for more than 10 years.

Modern logistics

Before being intelligent and intelligent, the logistics industry first experienced a transition from traditional to modern. After the reform and opening up, the economy has developed rapidly, the logistics infrastructure has been continuously improved, and the logistics practitioners have become more diverse from a single public-owned enterprise. Private, collective and individual have entered the industry. In the 1990s, private express enterprises such as SF Express, Tiantian, and Zhaiji Express appear. From 1978 to 1999, the national cargo transportation volume increased from 3.2 billion tons to 12.9 billion tons.

After entering the 21st century, my country's entry into the WTO has greatly increased import and export trade. At the same time, e-commerce has risen rapidly, and the logistics industry has entered a rapid growth period. From 2000 to 2013, the total amount of social logistics in the country doubled 3.3 times, with a compound annual growth rate of 19%. Taking advantage of the tailwinds of capital, technology and policy, the logistics industry has realized a leap-forward transformation from traditional logistics to modern logistics.

New pattern

In 2014, the State Council released the "Middle- and Long-Term Planning for the Development of the Logistics Industry", which proposed to improve the standardization, informatization, intelligence and intensiveness of the logistics industry. Under the new economy and new technology, the technological methods and thinking methods brought by the Internet have already revolutionized the logistics industry.

Taking road freight as an example, e-commerce-derived platform logistics such as Cainiao and JD.com developed rapidly during this period; traditional logistics companies such as SF Express and Debon actively embrace digital transformation; there are also emerging logistics such as Fuyou Trucks that were born with technological genes Enterprises join the market.

The impact of technology is obvious. Taking inter-city vehicle transportation as an example, it has a market of more than 3 trillion yuan, but the phenomenon of small, scattered, and chaotic is serious. More than 80% of the capacity is individual drivers and small and medium-sized fleets, and the truck empty driving rate is as high as 30%. . Around 2015, a number of technology logistics companies such as Fuyou Truck entered the market. In 2016, the policy of car-free carriers was introduced. In 2017, the pilot of car-free carriers officially landed.

Driven by the favorable technology and policies, the Ministry of Communications data shows that within one year of the pilot, the vehicle mileage utilization rate has increased by 50% compared with the traditional transportation mode, and the delivery time has been reduced from 2-3 days to several hours. As one of the first batch of pilot companies, Fuyou Truck has uniquely developed the world's first intelligent inter-city vehicle dispatching system, which uses algorithms to schedule trucks to randomly run. The running data shows that under algorithmic scheduling, the vehicle can move 9.6 meters. The monthly effective mileage of vans has increased from 7,000-9,000 kilometers to 11,000 kilometers or even higher.

new trend

Returning to the essence, the ultimate goal of logistics is to realize the delivery of goods with higher efficiency and lower cost. Facing challenges such as the disappearance of the demographic dividend, rising energy costs, and personalization of the needs of consignors, technology is undoubtedly the best way to reduce costs and increase efficiency. This has also become a driving force for logistics companies to continue to increase technology investment.

Today, big data, cloud computing, automation and other technologies are beginning to be applied in the logistics industry, but Fudan Truck founder and CEO Shan Dandan once said in an interview that the current application of AI technology in the logistics industry is less than 5%. In June 2019, Deloitte, a well-known consulting firm, also released a report pointing out that the adoption rate of AI and driverless technology in the logistics industry in 2018 was less than 10%, and it is expected that the utilization rate will reach 45%-50% in the next 5 years. The adoption rate of IoT technology in 2018 is about 20%. With the promotion of 5G and other technologies, the utilization rate will be close to 80% in the next 5 years.