III. Successful Case | EFX Helps Fuda Alloy Build Its First Complete Smart Warehousing System

IV. Challenges of the Fuda Alloy Project Wheels Project

In early 2020, during the initial outbreak of the pandemic, a phone call from Fuda Alloy in Wenzhou brought the two companies—already geographically close in southern Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu—into closer collaboration. During discussions, EFX learned that, driven by rapid business growth, Fuda Alloy urgently needed to build a high-standard automated AS/RS to achieve close coordination between production and warehousing and to establish an effective information-sharing mechanism across the supply chain. After confirming the project consultation requirements, EFX immediately traveled south to Wenzhou to visit Fuda Alloy. Following on-site research, although a preliminary solution plan had been formed, there was still a significant gap before detailed design and implementation. Through continuous communication with the head of Fuda Alloy’s automation division, both parties jointly identified the following four key challenges of the project.

Project Challenge 1: How copper alloy products with different specifications can be accurately sorted prior to inbound storage.

Project Challenge 2: How to improve quality, reduce costs, and enhance efficiency in highly customized smart warehousing under unstable inbound flow conditions.

Project Challenge 3: How to achieve a higher level of safe load-bearing capacity under the constraints of the civil structure of a second-floor warehouse.

Project Challenge 4: How the newly implemented warehouse management system can form a fully closed-loop integration with the existing ERP system and the newly introduced MES system.

Identifying the key problems means solving half of them, bringing the project closer to success. In response to these four challenges, EFX provided corresponding solutions.

V. How EFX Helped Fuda Alloy Reduce Costs and Improve Efficiency

• 3D vision sorting to create a new industry benchmark for automated warehousing projects.

  Fuda Alloy has a wide variety of products with different standards and specifications. Accordingly, shelf layer heights and load capacities vary, requiring materials to efficiently, rapidly, and accurately complete depalletizing, grasping, classification, and repalletizing operations on the conveying line before inbound storage. In this project, EFX adopted 3D vision robots. By combining three-dimensional visual imaging with digital sensing technology, the robots accurately identify products and quickly output product position, posture, and dimensions, guiding precise robotic grasping for palletizing, classification, and inbound sorting.

  Through the 3D vision robot solution provided by EFX, Fuda Alloy’s smart warehousing project has become a new local model and an industry benchmark.

  

• Improving quality, reducing costs, and increasing efficiency through innovative four-way shuttle material conveying concepts.

  The fundamental objective of building smart warehousing for enterprises is to improve quality, reduce costs, and increase efficiency in material storage and transportation processes, and the Fuda Alloy project is no exception. In many non-standard projects, material transportation and inbound operations often follow a sequence, which can result in idle time for four-way shuttles, preventing maximum utilization of equipment. Considering project budgets, making reasonable use of four-way shuttles during idle periods—when they are not performing inbound shuttling—to undertake part of the material conveying tasks can reduce the need for at least one additional conveying line or several AGVs, thereby lowering unnecessary investment costs. This represents a flexible and practical solution.

  In the Fuda Alloy project, by adopting a four-way shuttle AS/RS, EFX extended the shuttle rails to the conveying lines, enabling the shuttles to complete part of the inbound conveying tasks during idle time, ultimately greatly improving equipment utilization. A small creative improvement fully demonstrated the effects of improving quality, reducing costs, and increasing efficiency.

  
  

• System AI algorithms introducing a new model of dynamic weight-based location management.

  Due to limitations of the warehouse’s civil structure, storage locations and load-bearing capacity faced significant challenges. The specifications of copper alloy products (size and weight) have a substantial impact on shelf layer heights, load-bearing capacity, and layout. During stacking, some shelves may not reach full load capacity, while others may risk overload. Without resolution, neither safety nor high-density storage could be effectively ensured.

  To address this issue, EFX and Fuda Alloy held intensive discussions, revised the solution, controlled material flow, and increased storage locations. Ultimately, based on system algorithms, they established a principle of dynamic weight-based storage locations for Fuda Alloy, increasing dynamic weight allocation to resolve the actual load-bearing issues of the second-floor warehouse. This achieved two goals at once: maximizing shelf load storage while fully ensuring safety.

• Eliminating information silos and building a fully closed-loop ecosystem for material production, transportation, and storage.

  Generally, when enterprises build digital system architectures, later-introduced systems must be compatible with previously implemented core systems to achieve mutual compatibility and efficient operation.

  EFX’s self-developed Warehouse Management System (WMS), through open interfaces, seamlessly integrated with Fuda Alloy’s existing ERP and newly introduced MES systems. This broke down information silos across different operational segments, ensuring that information from each segment is no longer isolated and enabling a fully closed-loop ecosystem with visible processes, automatic control, and intelligent management across production, conveying, and storage.

  

VI. Project Significance

One-stop efficient delivery with full accompaniment during production, facilitating rapid signing of the Phase II project.

After project delivery, the EFX team stationed on site to provide accompaniment during production. Throughout more than six months of trial operation with on-site support, the system equipment was fully debugged and operated efficiently and stably, once again validating the rationality of the earlier planning and design and successfully completing project acceptance.

Fuda Alloy highly recognized EFX for its level of cooperation, professionalism, and delivery efficiency, and promptly signed the Phase II project.