Case Study: Benchmark Smart Warehousing for Papermaking by Huashine and Asia Symbol

When traditional papermaking integrates with new productive forces, warehousing is no longer a simple link of goods stacking, retrieval and delivery. Instead, it has evolved into a digital and intelligent hub connecting production, inventory, orders and distribution. 

At the 500,000-ton annual cultural paper project of Asia Symbol, a 38-meter-high automated high-bay warehouse adopts a dedicated automated system for flat and roll paper warehouses, setting a benchmark for industrial transformation. The combination of intelligent logistics and digital systems is revolutionizing the warehousing and management model across the papermaking sector.

 1. Industry Pain Points

Papermaking enterprises are confronted with prominent challenges in warehousing and logistics, which greatly hinder overall operational efficiency:

Stringent storage requirements: Paper rolls feature large diameters and heavy weights, demanding high load-bearing capacity and stability for warehouses. Traditional flat warehouses suffer from low space utilization and potential safety hazards.

Extensive inventory management: Operations rely heavily on manual work and paper documents, resulting in delayed and inaccurate inventory data, frequent discrepancies between accounts and actual goods, and impaired production planning and delivery accuracy.

High labor dependency: Inbound and outbound operations mainly depend on manual labor and forklifts, leading to high labor intensity, low efficiency and safety risks, making it difficult to cope with high-frequency logistics demands.

Poor system collaboration: Isolated warehouse data fails to connect with production and sales systems, causing inefficient material flow, slow order response and inflexible supply chains.

As a leading enterprise in China’s pulp and paper industry, Asia Symbol saw its production capacity of the PM14 cultural paper project keep growing. The conventional warehousing mode could no longer match its booming production and delivery demands, making intelligent upgrading an inevitable choice.

 2. Solutions

Against the backdrop of industrial digital transformation, intelligent warehousing systems centered on automation and informatization have become the optimal solution to address warehousing bottlenecks in the papermaking industry. By integrating advanced warehousing equipment including stacker cranes, conveyor lines and RGV shuttles, intelligent software such as Warehouse Management System (WMS) and Warehouse Control System (WCS), as well as IoT technologies, the whole process ranging from paper roll offloading, warehousing, in-stock management to order outbound delivery can be fully automated and digitalized. 

This solution improves warehouse space utilization, cuts labor reliance and ensures safe and precise operations. Meanwhile, it enables transparent inventory information, supporting refined management and intelligent decision-making for enterprises.

To tackle logistics challenges, Huashine Intelligent customized an automated system for flat and roll paper warehouses for Asia Symbol. Adopting an integrated approach of space restructuring, equipment empowerment and digital-intelligent convergence, the project successfully upgraded traditional flat warehouses to state-of-the-art high-bay warehouses. It has delivered a replicable and practical model for intelligent transformation in the papermaking industry, and boosted the synergy between Asia Symbol’s production capacity and logistics efficiency.

The project deploys 38-meter ultra-high racks with a 14-aisle hierarchical layout, maximizing vertical space and effectively expanding storage capacity within the same land area, a practical solution to land shortages prevalent in papermaking warehousing. 

A full set of customized automated equipment tailored for paper products, including intelligent conveyor lines, high-speed stacker cranes and circular RGVs, enables fully unmanned operations, reducing labor input and product damage.

Centered on WMS, the system is deeply interconnected with ERP and MES systems. Combined with IoT and big data technologies, it builds a full-link data loop covering production, warehousing and orders, realizing full-process visualization, traceability and intelligent scheduling.

 3. Customer Benefits

Since its launch, the project has delivered outstanding performance with comprehensive improvements in operational efficiency, cost control, space utilization, low-carbon development and industrial demonstration, emerging as a typical example of intelligent warehousing transformation in the papermaking industry.

Higher efficiency: Inbound and outbound efficiency is greatly enhanced, with the entire order fulfillment process completed within 2 hours for faster response.

Cost optimization: Labor costs are notably reduced, along with lower forklift energy consumption.

Better product quality: Errors in stock sorting and product damage rates drop significantly.

Eco-friendly & intensive development: Full utilization of vertical space cuts overall energy consumption and emissions, contributing to the national dual-carbon goals.

The successful partnership between Huashine Intelligent and Asia Symbol represents not only efficient collaboration between two enterprises, but also a valuable practice for intelligent warehousing upgrading in the papermaking sector.

Going forward, Huasheng Intelligent will continue to take technological innovation as the core and customer demands as the priority. We will further explore the field of intelligent equipment, optimize integrated intelligent warehousing and logistics solutions, and deliver one-stop full-process services for more manufacturing enterprises. Empowering industrial upgrading with intelligent equipment, we look forward to cooperating with more partners to write a new chapter for intelligent manufacturing.