In Shenzhen, there is an on-site intelligent logistics solution provider that has become a dark horse in the industry in just a few years. The annual order volume in 2021 will achieve an ultra-high-speed growth of over 2,000% compared with 2020, and the business volume is still expected to double in 2022. This technologically innovative company with a very strong growth rate is Multiway Robotics.
What is the secret behind this growth rate and amazing achievements? The reporter of this magazine went to Shenzhen Guangming Science City, walked into the Multiway Robotics at close range, and met Wang Chuanlong, the chief marketing officer (CMO) face to face, and put forward insights and opinions from the company's new generation of products and solutions, core technology research and development, and enterprise organization and management experience.
Continue to innovate and build an integrated software and hardware delivery platform
Multiway Robotics is a leading on-site intelligent logistics solution provider, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, with offices in East China, Central China, North China, Southwest China, Northeast China and other places, and has established an overseas operation center, business sales, operations and The service covers all regions at home and abroad.
The company focuses on advanced robotics and artificial intelligence technology, providing customers with complete intelligent manufacturing and intelligent logistics solutions. Hardware products include: various types of unmanned forklifts, AMRs, unmanned tractors and four-way shuttles; software systems include: Multiway cloud, WMS, WCS, on-site management systems and various visual solutions, which have been used in factories, warehousing, logistics A large number of benchmark projects have been delivered in such fields.
Since its establishment, Multiway Robotics has served hundreds of large-scale enterprise customers, covering more than 20 industries such as food, medicine, building materials, new energy, 3C, etc. Among them, there are many benchmarking companies such as the world's top 500, industry leaders, and invisible champions, becoming the industry A trusted partner for leading customers.
Wang Chuanlong introduced that at the end of March this year, the launch of the new product launch on the new journey cloud brought Multiway refreshing new robot products, such as "Intelligent Four-Way Shuttle MW-Z1", "Mini King Kong MW-X1500", "Multiway Alpha One(II)", and the flexible vision solution "Sky Eye System".
It is understood that the "four-way shuttle MW-Z1" released by Multiway Robotics this time has the thinnest fuselage in the industry, only 120mm, with a load of 1500kg and a running speed of 1.5m/s. It can perceive the environment in real time through visual technology. It can detect the over-loading of goods and avoid the risk of goods overturning. At the same time, it can cooperate with various equipment and systems such as hoists, conveyor lines, RCS, WCS, etc. to realize four-way operation, automatic operation, cluster scheduling and other functions, and combine them into dense storage automatic three-dimensional storehouse.
The release of this product marks the leap of Multiway from the field of handling to the field of storage. It can be applied to the "four-way dense access solution" of the logistics transfer center warehouse, finished product warehouse, semi-finished product warehouse, and raw material warehouse. Compared with traditional logistics The storage method can increase the storage capacity rate by 30-40%.
In the handling scene, Multiway Robotics also announced the launch of the "new product Mini King Kong MW-X1500", which is small in size and light in weight, only 240kg, and the load can reach 1500kg. Flat transportation, stable operation, suitable for extremely narrow roadway operation, greatly improving space utilization, realizing fast, flexible, modularized and extremely fast deployment, is an unmanned forklift solution with both cost and performance advantages.
It is worth mentioning that at this conference, Multiway Robotics optimized and upgraded to launch a new form of unmanned forklift with the industry's first "single two-carrying" - Multiway Alpha One (Ⅱ), following the CeMAT 2021 Asia Logistics in October 2021 After the exhibition was launched, it has attracted much attention and can effectively meet the triple pursuit of aesthetics, performance and efficiency. Therefore, with innovative design concepts and strong product performance, it stood out from nearly 10,000 works submitted by hundreds of countries around the world. This year At the beginning of April, it won the 2022 German Red Dot Award and was authoritatively recognized by international experts; this product has also been praised by many industry veterans as "a completely innovative product in the field of unmanned forklifts."
Its self-contained lifting mechanism can lift up to 1000mm, the single-support load can be 1500kg, and the full-load double-support can reach 3000kg. It supports traverse, spin, turn, drift, forward, and backward, with all-round driving performance, and can be flexibly connected with elevators, hoists, automatic doors, manipulators, conveyor lines and other equipment; at the same time, it has the ability to move in all directions, which can be used in narrow It can walk freely in the roadway, greatly improve the space utilization rate of the enterprise, and the multi-performance advantages also make it more suitable for practical scenarios.
In addition, Multiway Robotics also highlighted the use of machine vision and artificial intelligence technology to create a flexible solution, enabling intelligent manufacturing and intelligent logistics vision system technology - Tianyan system.
Through the dynamic monitoring of business covering the whole area, and the coordination of vehicles, roads and depots, and the data processing platform of edge computing, the Tianyan system achieves management visualization, safe operation environment, and ensures the stable operation of the factory, so as to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Relying on on-site data edge collection, real-time computing platform, visual analysis platform, and operation and maintenance management platform, it integrates the multi-dimensional data of "people, vehicles, objects, and fields" in the area to realize intelligent and automated on-site logistics and ensure safe and stable operations.
In the case of optimizing algorithm capabilities, developed "pallet attitude recognition", "storage location detection", "visual inventory", "cage stacking", "high-level storage", "dimension measurement", "unmanned loading and unloading vehicles", etc. The core complex technology adapts to the scene, and different customer sites can be quickly configured and imported.
Possess the ability to implement complex scenarios, leading the industry in project implementation
Forklifts are modern industrial infrastructure equipment, with a global stock of over 9 million units. Wang Chuanlong believes that although the demand for unmanned forklifts is strong, the existing solutions have high cost, poor performance and lack of system platform capabilities. Starting from the unmanned handling infrastructure that unmanned forklifts cut into, to building software and hardware integrated intelligent logistics solutions, the market scale continues to expand, and it is a blue ocean market with an increasing speed from hundreds of billions to trillions.
According to Wang Chuanlong, the field of intelligent logistics is still in the early stage of development. The mobile micro-robot is driven by technology, self-developed core hardware, algorithms and software systems, collaborative evolution, rapid iterative upgrades, and the construction of a three-in-one intelligent logistics integrated delivery platform, forming a deep competition barrier , providing intelligent logistics solutions with cost and performance advantages.
The underlying vehicle system adopts a decoupling design, and the logic is an independent module, which can be deployed by the implementer without debugging the code;
The upper-layer system supports the simultaneous operation of hundreds of vehicles, realizes intelligent cluster scheduling, manages equipment and information flow in the whole site, and comprehensively predicts and monitors the system status to ensure the healthy operation of the system.
Multiway cloud system provides remote equipment upgrade, continuous iterative optimization, provides a unified management platform and operation and maintenance platform for data collection/feedback analysis, and can customize reports according to enterprise needs.
In the delivery process for customers, Multiway Robotics also performed well. In addition to the strict delivery standardization process, its own self-calibration system and adaptive system ensure the flexibility of delivery. Once created a record of 1 implementation engineer, at the customer site , 2 days of acceptance. To this end, Wang Chuanlong also does not hide his pride, "The on-site intelligent logistics series products of Multiway Robotics are the most complete and complete in the world, and provide complete intelligent manufacturing and intelligent logistics solutions in the form of software and hardware matching ."
Focus on the extreme, gain the favor of capital
Multiway Robotics has grown from a small number of people to a team of nearly 300, of which 60% are R&D personnel. The company's technical backbone team is composed of doctors and masters from major domestic and foreign universities such as Harbin Institute of Technology, Western University of Technology, Xiamen University, and University of Electronic Science and Technology. During the interview, Wang Chuanlong specifically mentioned that there are two reasons behind the rapid growth.
The first reason is that its core members have deep accumulation in the industry, not only have more than ten years of work experience in the fields of robots, AGV, unmanned driving and integrated logistics, but also lead the implementation of dozens of deployments in many Fortune 500 companies. A smart logistics-related project, with practical experience and deep understanding of multiple industry benchmarking sites. The second reason is that Multiway Robotics has always advocated an efficient and pragmatic management style, a flat and open corporate culture, and a working atmosphere of small steps and fast running, which also provides fertile soil and solid backing for the rapid growth of Multiway Robotics.
In February this year, Multiway Robotics announced the completion of the A2 round of financing of over 100 million yuan led by CCV Capital Partners. According to Wang Chuanlong, the funds raised will be mainly used to strengthen technology research and development and marketing team building, achieve continuous acceleration of product research and development, further consolidate the leading position of Multiway Robotics in the intelligent logistics industry, and build a more complete full-process customer service system. , to escort end customers.
Conclusion
According to relevant statistics, the sales volume of the unmanned forklift market in 2021 will be about 8,000 units, growing at an annual growth rate of 50% to 80%. However, from the perspective of the overall quantity comparison, the penetration rate of unmanned forklifts in the overall domestic electric forklift market is still less than 1%, which is in a relatively initial state.
Facing this blue ocean market, Wang Chuanlong said that Multiway Robotics will unswervingly adhere to the independent research and development of core algorithms and systems, from core components to upper-level systems, through the integration of software and hardware to build deep technical barriers, while meeting the complexities of different industries. While meeting the diversified needs of scenarios, it will improve the input-output ratio and end-customer experience, and contribute to the rapid and healthy development of the field of intelligent logistics robots.