Nike Secret Store

In early 2011, Nike China Logistics Center (CLC) was opened in Taicang, Jiangsu. It is also the seventh and second largest logistics center in the world.

When Nike's annual sales in Greater China reached $1 billion 864 million (earnings report December 2009 to November 2010 figures), what is the priority and the most important thing it should do now?

It's not brand, not marketing, but a high efficiency.

The huge square box has a gross floor area of 200 thousand square meters, with more than 100 thousand pallets, with annual throughput capacity of over 240 million times, and can meet 79 container trucks loading and unloading.

What's more,

Giant central processor

It's like a giant CPU.

The basis of sorting and management of all commodities depends on the powerful ability of digital collection and processing.

All goods are embedded in an electronic tag and scanned one by one. The workers pick and distribute goods according to the information on the electronic display screen. The information is connected to Nike through the special data port. Every day, a complete shared data is sent back to the relevant departments.

There are so many huge amounts of information that the amount of coding required by computers is almost the largest in the world.

"The world's top level logistics warehouse adopts the most advanced technology in the industry, and many technologies are pioneered and unique by Nike."

Hans Van Albic, vice president of Nike global operations technology (Hans van Alebeek) told reporters.

Including a total of 9 kilometers of conveyor belt, order picking machine, radio frequency scanner, automated warehouse management system, and many other logistics technology and equipment, so that the warehouse in the allocation efficiency, huff and puff, resilience of three indicators reached the highest level in the world.

Intelligent world

The Nike's first large logistics center in China has two buildings, which store shoes and clothing items separately, and connect them through the conveyor belt device.

The storage area is divided into two parts: the whole box area and the pallet area, and the bulk pallet area is distributed among them.

If there are large orders, the whole box area can be directly distributed; small orders replenishment can be extracted directly from the bulk goods in the pallet area.

According to the requirement of distribution and sorting, the clothing distribution floor is divided into three layers: the top level is 45 thousand shelf areas with independent coding, the two is two automatic sorting system, the first is the packing and loading distribution area.

Surprisingly, the coding of the top shelf area with 45 thousand independent codes is actually not regular. This is mainly to avoid operators from memorizing the code with frequent operation, resulting in misoperation.

The pick up operator uses the machine speech system to talk with the computer and check the inventory information. The automatic control system before the pick-up will tell the operator to pick up the goods area. After the operator arrives, he will report the area code and the quantity of the goods to the computer system through the microphone and earphone.

The speech recognition system is developed by Nike independently. It can recognize languages and even dialects in different countries. The system will collect and record the audio information of each operator in advance.

In case of emergency, Nike is equipped with a set of emergency devices. Once the speech recognition system fails, the pick up operator can use the handheld scanning device to save the emergency, which is another use of shelf code.

At the same time, the angle of these shelves is designed according to ergonomics to minimize the strain of lumbar muscles.

Nike stipulates that when the shelves are abundant, the goods must first exist in the middle layer to facilitate the staff to pick up the goods.

At the bottom of the shelf, the gap between the bottom shelf and the floor can accommodate temporarily expanded shelves to facilitate the storage of materials during the peak delivery period.

The storage area of the top floor of the CLC3 building is as high as 10 meters. In order to maximize the utilization rate of space and increase the capacity of goods, Nike adopted a narrow laneway system, and the width of the roadway between the shelves was also reduced to the minimum, which is almost the same as the width of the fork lift truck.

Nike installed a special magnetic conductor system under the floor for forklift truck traction.

The intelligent guidance system enables the driver to automatically enter the magnetic line under the guidance of the most accurate driving attitude and to avoid any collision.

When the automatic guidance is taken, the forklift can only go straight ahead and forward along the distribution of the magnetic wire, but will not swing around. After the loading car is completed, the magnetic switch will be switched off, and the lorry can turn around.

CLC the general process of delivering goods is receiving orders, sorting orders, and picking up goods in storage areas.

The whole area of the storage area is shipped to the 2 floor sorting area through the conveyor belt. The operator and the conveyor belt will be checked and checked two times. The balance of the order goods will be manually replenishment by the 3 floor operator. After the automatic sorting machine is checked and packed, it will be pported to the 1 floor for scanning, checking, loading and shipping.

In the course of operation, the most important factor is precision.

Taking clothing sorting as an example, when the whole box goods in the storage area of the 3 storehouse are sent to the 2 floor through the conveyor, the operator will scan the label through the handheld scanner.

The placement and height of all labels are strictly regulated to improve the efficiency of checking.

After checking correctly, when the conveyor belt was sent to the 1 floor, scanning equipment was scanned every few meters along the way, the barcode was scanned, and the location information was recorded.

This information is also connected with the automatic sorting equipment distributed in the functional areas of the logistics center, so that the products can be sent to different operation areas quickly.

Once the sorting is erroneous, the pmission belt will automatically throw out the wrong goods and enter the special channel to be handled by the special person.

When the goods are checked by layers, from sorting to packing, CLC's system will automatically print out a label, clearly indicating the number and number of goods.

The computer can also estimate the volume of the cargo and tell the operator what type of packing box it is most suitable for.

In addition to checking the number and code of the goods, the packing operator should attach the goods delivery labels to the specified location, so that the machine or manpower in the next link will be checked again.

Before loading and dispatching, the warehouse management system performs information screening again, according to the time distribution requirements of the order, using different pportation tools and multi-level logistics network to ensure that the products are delivered efficiently, accurately, timely and at the lowest cost.

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What happens when a fire breaks out? CLC avoided all this at the beginning of the design.

There are more than 220 air detectors installed here. Once the fire is on, the automatic alarm system will respond and open the sprinkler system.

Outside the storage area, Nike also set up a "firewall". Even if a fire breaks down, the floor will collapse in a specific direction to ensure that another independent area is intact.

In the middle of the two walls, CLC specially set up firefighters' rescue passageways and refuge walkways. The latter also has a specially designed positive pressure air supply system, which only releases smoke from specific air ducts and does not harm personal safety.