Smart Unattended Warehouse | Digital Self-Service Management Solution for Labor Protection and Office Supplies

Modern manufacturing enterprises have established dedicated storage areas for personal protective equipment and office supplies, with plans to comprehensively transform them into standardized unmanned warehouses. The warehouse houses approximately 100 categories of materials, organized into two main sections: workshop safety and protective supplies, and administrative office consumables. Personal protective equipment meets the daily protection needs of workers across all production processes, quality control personnel, and maintenance teams; office consumables serve administrative, financial, and production management departments. Material requisition occurs across multiple positions throughout the facility, with diverse usage scenarios including large-scale requests during morning shifts, temporary replenishment of consumables during night shifts, and sporadic withdrawals during holidays.

The warehouse currently operates under a traditional management model utilizing open shelving systems with manual handling of materials. All material movements are recorded via handwritten paper documents, while inventory counts and consumable statistics are performed entirely manually by warehouse staff. With the factory implementing continuous two-shift or three-shift production schedules, the constant demand for material requisitions conflicts significantly with the fixed-time manual storage approach. Meanwhile, the workload associated with manual management, tracking, and inventory counting for nearly 100 different items continues to grow substantially. The conventional warehouse management system can no longer meet the company's upgraded objectives of lean cost control and digitalized on-site management; therefore, a comprehensive upgrade to an unmanned self-service warehousing system is planned.

Key pain points of traditional manual warehousing:

Material collection is time-constrained; supplies cannot be requested outside working hours. The long queues during morning shift collections directly hinder production and administrative workflows.

There is no standardized control over requisition quotas, and material usage across all positions and departments is unrestricted. Waste of personal protective equipment and office supplies is widespread, making it impossible to accurately calculate consumption costs.

Nearly a hundred types of materials rely on manual periodic inventory checks, which involve substantial labor intensity; there is a delay in inventory data between consecutive counts, and high-frequency consumables are prone to supply shortages.

Paper-based documentation is cumbersome to record and archive, making it difficult to track detailed consumable usage records, and unable to efficiently support financial cost accounting or facility safety inspections.

A comprehensive solution for fully automated, unmanned warehouses

The renovation of the labor protection and office supplies warehouse employs smart weighing shelves as the primary storage solution, complemented by an intelligent access control system and a standalone cloud-based integrated inventory management platform. This establishes a comprehensive, round-the-clock unmanned self-service material retrieval system operating 7×24 hours, replacing traditional practices such as dedicated warehouse staffing, paper-based record-keeping, and manual inventory counts. The system effortlessly supports long-term standardized management of diverse labor protection and office supplies.

24/7 uninterrupted self-service application, solving material delivery delays

The renovated unmanned warehouse remains open to the public year-round, free from restrictions during working hours, weekends, or statutory holidays. All employees can log in using their card details or account credentials for identity verification; upon system recognition of personal information, access permissions are granted, allowing them to independently enter the storage area and select required materials. For various scenarios—including centralized material collection by morning shifts, temporary replenishment by night shifts, or sporadic withdrawals during holidays—no queuing is required for warehouse staff to process distribution requests. After material retrieval, the built-in high-precision weighing module on smart shelves automatically detects weight discrepancies, with the system instantly calculating consumption quantities and updating inventory records in real time. This eliminates the need for manual documentation, offline signatures, or manual data entry, significantly reducing processing time and fundamentally resolving congestion issues associated with centralized material withdrawals.

Independent storage space planning by zone to achieve standardized 5S material storage

The intelligent whole-shelf weighing system features uniformly configured multi-layered, independently segregated storage compartments organized into two physical zones: personal protective equipment and office consumables. Each of the hundred material categories is assigned a dedicated storage location with clearly defined boundaries between categories, effectively eliminating common issues like cluttered stacking found in traditional shelving systems. This design complies with factory workshop 5S management standards.

Dual refined control of hierarchical permissions and monthly spending limits

The inventory management backend supports multi-level permission customization, enabling differentiated access controls based on roles and departments, and allowing tailored collection permissions and quantities for personal protective equipment and office supplies across different teams. For unattended warehouses, every personnel entry/exit and every material retrieval/replacement operation generates an immutable electronic record that fully documents all details—including recipient, department, material model, quantity, and operation time—which is stored permanently in the cloud for instant retrieval and verification.

The system performs automatic dynamic inventory counts, complemented by multi-level intelligent inventory alerts.

Leveraging intelligent shelves for continuous, real-time weight data collection around the clock, the system enables dynamic automated inventory counting of all 100 warehouse items 24/7, eliminating the need for warehouse staff to spend significant time manually counting each box and package monthly. Managers can customize differentiated safety stock thresholds in the backend based on material consumption rates; set regular replenishment alerts for high-turnover consumables like masks and printing paper; and receive automatic alerts from the system when inventory levels approach critical thresholds, allowing procurement plans to be finalized ahead of schedule and preventing production or operational disruptions caused by temporary supply shortages. The backend supports one-click export of standardized consumption reports by department, team, or time period, automatically aggregates monthly and quarterly usage data for various materials, and allows report formats to integrate directly with corporate finance and internal control departments, eliminating manual data processing requirements.

Core Customer Value of Unmanned Warehouses Upon Deployment

The 24/7 self-service material collection system eliminates time constraints, eliminating queues during morning rush hours and enabling timely replenishment of personal protective equipment and office supplies for night shifts and holidays. This ensures compliant implementation of workplace safety protocols, efficient handling of daily administrative tasks, and prevents operational delays caused by material shortages.

The quota control mechanism, combined with digital consumption statistics, effectively reduces material waste. The system automatically breaks down consumption data across departments and teams, enabling precise accounting of labor protection and office costs, thereby providing enterprises with reliable, actionable data for cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

This initiative eliminates the need for dedicated staff to monitor warehouse operations, streamlining two repetitive tasks: filling out paper documents and conducting periodic manual inventory counts. Existing warehouse personnel can now focus on high-value management responsibilities such as procurement planning, inventory structure optimization, and material coordination, significantly reducing the company's warehousing labor costs.

Intelligent shelves systematically organize and arrange materials, enhancing standardized on-site management within the facility; comprehensive electronic records are permanently archived and tamper-proof, enabling efficient and convenient retrieval of detailed information, thereby facilitating various inspection tasks such as internal financial cost audits and workplace safety inspections.