To this end, "Focus Interview" visited Zichen Technology in Liyang, Jiangsu, and showed the high-density flexible warehouse that ATOMIX and Zichen jointly built by applying AI and robotics technology to a new-energy lithium-battery materials storage scenario. In the interview, the founder of ATOMIX said: "In the first half of the year, sales of ATOMIX's Pallet Shuttle (four-way pallet shuttle) grew by 49%. On one hand, manufacturers are expanding capacity and have strong demand for intelligent solutions; on the other, it shows that traditional enterprises are increasingly confident in intelligent products. I believe that in the future, artificial intelligence can bring huge incremental gains to manufacturing efficiency."
Next, we will reveal the full process of building Zichen's intelligent warehouse, sharing with you the practical experience gained in putting AI and industry integration into practice, from the perspectives of both the supplier and the customer.
Zichen Technology pioneers the flexible pallet shuttle solution, setting an innovation benchmark for the lithium-battery industry
As lithium-ion batteries have become the core of global new-energy industry development, China, which accounts for about 70% of global capacity, is leading the industrial transformation of new energy. On one hand, lithium-battery capacity has surged on a large scale, demand for upstream raw materials such as anode materials and electrode substrates has increased substantially, and domestic anode material companies have entered a new wave of capacity expansion. On the other hand, under the influence of various uncertainties, new-energy companies are paying more attention to raw material cost control and supply chain assurance capabilities. These factors are driving new-energy companies to upgrade their warehousing operations with automation and intelligence.
As a well-known global graphite anode materials company, Zichen Technology has seen rapid business growth in recent years. To further increase the number of storage slots, improve warehouse space utilization and warehousing logistics efficiency, and ensure efficient and secure supply chain reserves, in 2022 Zichen Technology partnered with ATOMIX to carry out an automated, intelligent upgrade of the warehouse at its Liyang plant, becoming the first in the lithium-battery industry to deploy a flexible pallet shuttle storage solution.
The flexible pallet shuttle storage solution that ATOMIX tailored for the finished goods warehouse and the raw material warehouse at Zichen Technology's Liyang plant comprises 50 intelligent pallet shuttles and 34 intelligent Pallet AMRs, and uses an intelligent software system to coordinate and schedule an ultra-large-scale robot fleet.
The main reason Zichen Technology chose ATOMIX's "pallet shuttle + AMR" system is that, compared with other logistics automation solutions, it offers higher space utilization and lower pallet and maintenance costs, and better meets the company's business needs in terms of investment cost, delivery lead time, energy saving and emissions reduction, flexibility, and reliability.
Nan Mingzhe, general manager of Zichen Technology's Liyang company, said: "We have truly felt the value of carrying out automation and intelligent upgrades; they can effectively help us cut costs and raise efficiency, save energy and reduce emissions. We are also very willing to embrace new automation and intelligence technologies, to serve as a demonstration and driver for the fast-growing lithium-battery industry and to advance innovation in the industry."
Delivered and live in three months: ATOMIX helps the customer turn efficiency into returns
Normally, a whole-warehouse integrated project of this scale takes at least 6 months to deliver. After entering the site in September 2022, ATOMIX overcame many difficulties and completed delivery and go-live of the finished goods warehouse ahead of schedule in just 3 months. The raw material warehouse was also delivered and went live in March 2023.
Within 6,000 m² of warehouse space, a total of 20,000 storage locations were created for Zichen's Liyang plant, and AMRs are used to connect the production line with the inbound storage of finished goods coming off the line and the outbound shipment of products. Once the project went fully live, it supports 24-hour nonstop continuous operation, handling several thousand pallets of inbound and outbound work per day. With both operating efficiency and accuracy significantly improved, the project investment is estimated to be recovered within 3 years, achieving a relatively high return on investment.
Deep integration of AI and robotics: technology injects new momentum into the high-quality development of new energy
In May last year, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the Implementation Plan for Promoting the High-Quality Development of New Energy in the New Era, proposing to advance technological innovation and industrial upgrading in new energy, increase support for smart manufacturing and digital upgrading in the industry, and achieve deep integration of the new-energy industry with information technology. The completion of the smart warehousing and logistics project at Zichen's Liyang plant benefited from the deep combination of ATOMIX's AI and robotics technologies.
The intelligent pallet shuttle has a body only 125 mm tall and weighs 300 kg. Compared with a 10-tonne stacker crane, when moving the same one pallet of goods weighing 1 to 1.5 tonnes, the shuttle can further improve warehouse space utilization by 30% and save more than 50% of electricity, making it especially suitable for operating scenarios such as new energy and cold stores. In this project, the combined use of the dust-proof model and the dust-sweeping model effectively solved problems such as graphite material being prone to slipping and conducting electricity.
Beyond intelligent hardware, the core of smart warehousing is the scheduling software. As the brain of the pallet shuttle system, the intelligent software provides global central control and coordinated management of all types of equipment, making the orderly and efficient collaboration of ultra-large-scale robot clusters possible. In addition, the system can flexibly customize storage units, enabling differentiated customization of layer heights for mixed goods and flexible arrangement of mixed-SKU storage units, raising the space utilization of a conventional shuttle-based dense storage system by a further 30%; through dynamic storage slot planning and dynamic route planning, it raises the operating efficiency of the shuttle fleet by a further 40%; and by accumulating system operating data, it enables self-optimization of algorithms and system efficiency, releasing an additional 20% of throughput capacity.
The digital and intelligent transformation brought by the new generation of information technology is imperative. Promoting the deep integration of the digital economy with advanced manufacturing and modern services, and advancing the safe development of artificial intelligence, have become an important foundation and guarantee for achieving the digital transformation and iterative development of the national economy.
More and more real-economy enterprises like Zichen Technology are meeting innovative technologies halfway, seeking new growth points in the new wave of technology. On this journey, what ATOMIX does is turn the technological achievements of AI into system tools that enterprises can use and that solve their difficult problems, helping real-economy enterprises cut costs and raise efficiency and achieve high-quality development, and helping the real economy take on new vitality.