August 27, 2018. Shanghai – A group of CEIBS faculty recently got a closer look at JD’s unmanned warehouse in Shanghai’s Jiading district. The facility—covering 40,000 square meter and named ‘Asia No. 1’—is the largest and first fully unmanned warehouse in Asia. Mr. Pu Pujiang, the Director of JD’s ‘Asia No. 1’ Warehouse, welcomed the CEIBS group and lead a tour of the facility. The group was amazed at how robotic machinery sorted and dispatched deliveries.

During a roundtable discussion, the Mr. Pu and General Manager of JD’s Food and Beverage Division Mr. Li Changming introduced some of the capabilities of the unmanned warehouse as well as JD’s R&D efforts into artificial intelligence. During the discussion, Associate Professor of Strategy Terry Wang expressed interest in the performance evaluation standard of the unmanned warehouse. Professor of Economics and Decision Sciences Fang Yue also raised the question of how to utilise data collected from machinery in order to optimise the processes at the facility. CEIBS faculty and JD executives engaged in a heated discussion regarding the above topics. In wrapping up the visit, Mr. Pu thanked the CEIBS faculty members for their constructive ideas and said he looked forward to further discussions on these and other topics in the future.

The company visit was organized by the CEIBS Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) in order to help faculty gain a first-hand understanding of the challenges faced by Chinese companies. In addition to Prof. Fang and Prof. Fang, faculty members who visited JD’s unmanned warehouse included Professor of Economics Zhu Tian, Professor of Marketing Lydia Price, Professor of Management Jean Lee, Professor of Management Jane Lu, Distinguished Chair Professor of Management Larry Farh, and Lecture of Strategy Bai Guo.