Asian Fulfillment Center Conceptual Design

As the sixth largest e-retailer in China, this company’s products range from an Internet portal and games, to social networking and e-commerce. It is owned by the largest software company in China.

In order to compete in China’s highly time-sensitive e-commerce market, the company needed to improve its order fulfillment capability and improve logistics speed. There were expectations of a 20-fold increase in daily orders over the next three years and limited land supply around the metropolitan areas the company was targeting. It needed to maximize the use of storage space for an increasing number of stock-keeping units (SKUs).

Tompkins provided high level design and economic analysis of three alternatives, each with varying levels of automation for its new Shanghai fulfillment center. The designs were developed to leverage the new fulfillment and delivery capability as a platform for usage by its other e-commerce businesses.

• In light of uncertain future development, the design incorporated a flexible sorting and packing
• solution that could easily balance the capacity of single line and multi-line packing stations.
• The design incorporated different storing equipment types according to both volume and velocity on each
• SKU level.
• A flexible and adjustable mezzanine was incorporated into the design.