Geek+
Taking Smart Logistics to the Next Level

“Customer is King.”

This age-old business mantra has prevailed in the retail landscape for a reason. A business exists as long as the customer is content. Hence, retailers go above and beyond in ensuring better experiences, whether it is lower costs or on-time delivery.

However, is this enough?

Today, almost every retail firmwith e-commerce functionality offers doorstep delivery. In fact, it has become a minimum requirement for them to stay relevant in the current era. The modern, tech-savvy customers want their favourite e-commerce retailers to go one step further in ensuring high-speed product delivery.

But how can retailers enhance their supply chains to meet customers’ needs in the most profitable and efficient way possible?

The answer is with Geek+, a global technology company specialising in smart logistics.

“We leverage advanced robotics and artificial intelligence to develop robust solutions that can revolutionise warehouse and factory operations for the ‘next big’ e-commerce organisations,” says Jackson Zhang, vice president, Geek+ Europe. Backed by its cutting-edge capabilities, Geek+ is empowering a broad range of industries—apparel, retail, automotive, electronics, energy, and pharmaceutical—bysignificantly improving their warehouse capabilities, whether it is speed, product diversification, same-day delivery, volume, or safety.

Keeping Up with the E-Commerce Revolution

“The speed of shipping plays a critical role in how modern customers choose their preferred e-commerce brand,” mentions Zhang. In many cases, customers are even willing to pay a slightly higher price for same-day delivery. However, the current status-quo in the warehousing landscape still favours conventional, manual practices that cannot keep up with rising consumer demands. Especially in the pandemic era, the number of customers shopping online is increasing rapidly, necessitating greater speed and efficiency in warehousing operations.

This is where the Geek+ Smart Warehouse helps organisations revamp their warehousing processes. Its flexible solution design and simulation ensure seamless automation of almost every warehouse operation. A notable aspect is that it integrates seamlessly with picking, moving, sorting, forklift systems, and other automation equipment. This plays a key role in improving operational efficiency. Besides, the robotic system is easily compatible with the existing processes and can be customised according to changes in product storage or production capacity.

All of the products offered by Geek+ are equipped with technologies like light detection and ranging (LiDAR), visual simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM), and 2D code systems that facilitate reliable positioning references through feature maps without the need for intrusive infrastructure. Besides, the fusion of LiDAR with red-green-blue depth (RGB-D) cameras, safety sensors, and deep learning algorithms enable the robotic systems to accurately perceive the environment and pinpoint their targets.

Stringing together all of these different automation components within Geek+’s Smart Warehouse is a professional software architecture, which is deeply adapted to the industry with full coverage of robot management and intelligent warehouse execution. It consists of a data and simulation platform, an algorithm library, and a highly modular interface platform in addition to a robot management system (RMS) that simplifies multi-agent scheduling and task management. The architecture supports both cloud and local deployment and can simultaneously conduct traffic management, task allocation, capacity optimisation, safety emergency stops, and other control operations.

Notably, all of the robotic systems and management software are provided via a robust robot-as-a-service (RaaS) package. Through flexible business cooperation models, RaaS reduces the capital and capability barriers, thus providing organisations of all sizes seamless access to advanced robotic technologies. Taking its flexibility one step further, Geek+ offers cost-effective robot rental services as per clients’ needs.

Guiding the Path to Sustainable Warehousing

To further illustrate the value Geek+ brings to its customers, Zhang cites an instance where the company had partnered with one of the top three e-commerce organisations in China. The client was facing the challenges of rising sales due to the rapid shift to online shopping. The unpredictable demand, labour shortage, and high safety regulations were making it almost impossible for the firm to efficiently meet their customer requirements. They decided it was time to bring in Geek+ to automate their warehouse processes and upgrade their sorting operations.

“The client leveraged a combination of our sorting and picking robots on a pay-by-pick basis to reinvent their crucial processes,” informs Zhang. Within a short period, the firm was able to improve its sorting efficiency by 99 percent and meet customer requirements in time while also saving labour costs. After two years, the client is still leveraging the robotic systems of Geek+ to stay at the forefront of warehousing efficiency.

This is but one among many success stories wherein Geek+ enabled its clients to reinvent their processes and achieve phenomenal results. The company is already collaborating with industry-leading organisations like Alibaba and Walmart and helping them further improve their warehousing functions. In the upcoming months, Geek+ plans to introduce its leading-edge robotic automation capabilities beyond China and Japan and into Europe and the U.S. markets. The firm will also invest in augmenting its robotic technology to add new features for the benefit of its clients. “We will continue working toward removing every obstacle in our clients’ supply chain and propelling them to the helm of the e-commerce evolution,” concludes Zhang.