In recent years, with the vigorous development of e-commerce, the logistics industry has also been pushed to a whole new level. The logistics data generated by a large number of goods has shown explosive growth, and my country's logistics industry has gradually entered a new stage of transformation and upgrading.
According to data released by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, China’s logistics industry prosperity index (LPI) in August 2020 was 52.2%, an increase of 1.3 percentage points from the previous month. However, the logistics service price index, the main business profit index and the employment The personnel index is still low.
At present, express logistics companies have added 490,000 temporary workers, 100,000 vehicles, and 5.39 million square meters of processing space, increased capacity reserves, and added high-speed rail express lines.
In addition to investing a lot of manpower and transportation capacity, logistics companies have to deal with massive express data, logistics abnormal/problem parts, etc., and operating costs will inevitably rise.
The logistics industry has many pain points
Despite the increase in orders in the logistics market and strong business demand, it is an indisputable fact in the industry that logistics companies are under great pressure. With the increasing labor cost and the standardization of the process, the management difficulty of relying on manual operation is becoming more and more difficult, and the data quality is less and less guaranteed.
In addition, the cost of system interface integration is high, and it is more difficult for logistics companies to integrate waybill management, transportation management, financial management, and ERP systems, and there are many repetitive and inefficient useless functions.
The labor-intensive characteristics of the logistics industry are obvious, and the demand for labor in many links is also large. Coupled with the cumbersome logistics business process, important links such as data entry, waybills and abnormal parts handling often require a lot of manpower and time. In addition, the customer groups in the logistics industry cover all walks of life, and customer relationships are complex.
Confusing customer management processes, low service efficiency, untimely information feedback, and high error rates have not only reduced the operational efficiency and customer experience of logistics enterprises, but also restricted their further development.
Traditional manual operation methods have been unable to adapt to the new situation and new requirements of logistics business development, and efficiency bottlenecks and data gap problems have become more prominent.
Logistics companies seek digital transformation
Right now, many logistics companies are seeking digital transformation, especially in terms of simplifying operations and optimizing key businesses.
World Economic Forum (WEF) and Accenture (Accenture) analysis shows that due to the extensive digital transformation of the transportation industry, the value of logistics companies will reach 1.5 trillion US dollars, and the social benefits will further reach 2.4 trillion US dollars.
How to use new technologies to break through development bottlenecks and transform to high efficiency and intelligence has become a top priority for traditional logistics enterprises.
The emergence of RPA robotic process automation may become an accelerator for the digital transformation of the transportation and logistics industry.
RPA is a form of digital workforce that automates the work process through the participation of software robots to help companies complete a variety of high-volume repetitive tasks. By using "virtual employees" to replace manual labor, employees can have more time to focus on higher-value work.
Application scenarios of RPA in the logistics industry
According to the pain points of different scenarios in the logistics industry, UB Store has launched a series of logistics robot solutions. RPA robots can replace manual and tedious and repetitive operations on computers, process logistics data and information across systems, effectively avoid human error, improve processing efficiency and accuracy, thereby alleviating the shortage of logistics enterprises and reducing operating costs.
Scenario 1: Transportation of dangerous goods
Before the transportation of dangerous goods, employees need to log in to the road transportation safety supervision system and fill in the application form. There are hundreds of applications for the waybill to be processed every day. The content is numerous and manual input is prone to errors. When there are too many orders, I often have to work overtime.
The UB Store dangerous goods waybill automatic application robot can automatically log in to the dangerous goods road transportation safety supervision website, enter the waybill declaration page, and automatically fill in the scheduling and consignment information in batches according to the content in the waybill application form, and backfill the declaration results into the form. The robot efficiently and accurately completes all forms of application filling on the day, saving a lot of manpower and time costs.
Automatic application robot for dangerous goods waybill
Automatically log in to the dangerous goods road transportation safety supervision website and complete the declaration and filling of the waybill.
Scenario 2: Exception handling
Affected by the epidemic, many express outlets have a backlog of items to be delivered. The staff of the outlets receive many reminder calls every day, and a large number of abnormal logistics items are waiting to be processed, and the workload is rising rapidly. When employees work overtime, they are prone to manual errors and negative emotions increase.
The UB Store logistics abnormal parts reporting robot can automatically report the abnormal logistics data to the logistics back-end system to process the abnormal data. 7×24 hours of uninterrupted work, efficient, stable and error-free. One robot is equivalent to the workload of three employees, and business efficiency is increased by 300%. Effectively alleviate the shortage of manpower during peak business periods, thereby reducing enterprise labor costs.
Logistic abnormal parts reporting robot
The RPA robot that can automatically report abnormal logistics data to the logistics back-end system.
Scenario 3: Transportation management
With the increase of business and transportation volume, many logistics/freight/warehousing companies face a large number of illegal inquiries about motor vehicles every day. A large number of repeated operations consumes the company's manpower and time. Once the operation is not timely and the payment time is missed, it will also cause late fees and cause losses to the company.
The UB Store motor vehicle violation query robot can automatically log on to the violation website, query the violation of motor vehicles and summarize the violation results, and send the results to the relevant personnel by email. The robot can operate every day, observe the violations in time, automatically send the results of the violation query to the mailbox, and notify the relevant personnel, which saves the burden on the staff of the logistics company and improves the human efficiency.
Motor vehicle violation query robot
An RPA robot that can automatically log in to the illegal website, query the violation of motor vehicles and summarize the violation results, and can automatically send email notifications.
Scenario 4: Waybill processing
With the increasing volume of shipments, there are a large number of waybill statuses that need to be updated in real time every day. The employee sorts out the waybill numbers to be processed in advance and summarizes them into Excel, then logs in to the logistics background system, and copies the waybill numbers to the corresponding scanning area on the page one by one. Employees need to manually process hundreds of waybill numbers every day, which is a huge workload.
The UB Store waybill automatic arrival and disembarkation scanning robot can automatically complete the scanning operation of all waybill numbers. The robot logs into the logistics back-end system and enters the delivery page, automatically fills in the waybill number in the Excel sheet into the scanning area, and completes the scanning of the waybill number when entering the port.
Waybill automatically enters the port and gets off the scanning robot
The robot automatically fills the waybill number into the scanning area of the logistics system, and completes the scanning of all waybill numbers when entering and leaving the car.