Two companies can work in the same industry, store similar materials, and still end up with completely different automated warehouses.
That is not a sign that one solution is right and the other is wrong. It simply means their warehouses are solving different problems.
A pharmaceutical company may be trying to keep packaging materials moving smoothly into production while maintaining full batch traceability. Another may be dealing with a much larger mix of palletized and tote-based inventory. In automotive, one customer may have tens of thousands of small parts but limited building height, while another has a 22-meter warehouse and wants to make full use of the vertical space. Even in cold storage, one project may need the flexibility of a cold storage four-way shuttle, while another is better suited to a simpler deep-lane two-way shuttle system.
This is really where the value of an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) begins.
Before looking at robots, cranes or software, it is more useful to ask three practical questions:
What is becoming more expensive? What is becoming slower? What is becoming harder to control?
The answers are usually different from one warehouse to another.
Pharmaceutical Warehouses: Same Compliance Requirements, Different Logistics Priorities
Pharmaceutical warehouses are often grouped together because they share similar concerns: batch control, traceability, accuracy and production supply.
But once you look at the actual material flow, the differences become obvious.
At Zhenglai Pharmaceutical, the warehouse is closely linked to production.
Packaging materials are stored by stacker crane, but storage is only the first step. When production needs them, they leave the warehouse, pass through depalletizing and then continue through different conveyor routes toward the production area.
Finished products follow another path. After filling and packaging, they are palletized automatically and transferred into the finished-goods cool warehouse, where Pallet Four-Way Shuttle Robots handle storage and retrieval.
The challenge here was not simply to increase storage capacity.
The real issue was how to make several logistics processes work continuously: packaging-material storage, production supply, finished-product handling and shipment, while keeping batch, pallet and location information traceable throughout the process.
That is why Zhenglai uses several types of automation rather than one standard ASRS configuration.
Beiyao faced a different warehouse structure.
Its project includes approximately 2,400 pallet locations and 22,000 tote locations, with tote handling capacity reaching about 450 totes per hour.
This immediately changes the design logic.
A pallet warehouse and a tote warehouse behave very differently. Pallets occupy more space but move in larger units. Totes are smaller, yet the location count and retrieval frequency can become much higher.
So although both companies are pharmaceutical manufacturers, the automation priorities are not the same.
Zhenglai places more emphasis on the connection between warehouse and production processes. Beiyao has to deal with a broader mix of pallet and tote storage.
The industry gives us some common requirements. The material flow decides the system.
Automotive Parts: One Customer Has Limited Height, Another Has Height to Use
The difference between Toyota and Yonggui comes from another factor: the building itself.
Toyota's spare-parts center manages nearly 45,000 SKUs. For the small and medium-sized parts area, a large number of tote locations were needed, but the available building height was not especially high.
That made efficient use of every storage level important.
DELIECN used Mini-FlyBox in this area. Smaller H300 totes are stored across 15 levels, while taller H450 totes use 11 levels. Together, the system provides more than 17,000 tote locations.
The value is easy to understand.
If every tote were given the same vertical space, smaller containers would leave unused gaps above them. Those gaps may look insignificant at one location, but repeated thousands of times they become a meaningful loss of capacity.
Toyota also needed frequent small-parts picking. So the system could not focus only on putting more totes into the rack. Those totes still had to come out quickly and move toward the picking process.
Now compare that with Yonggui.
Its automated tote warehouse reaches 22.3 meters.
Here, the problem is almost the opposite. The building already provides a large amount of vertical space. If the storage system cannot use that height, much of the building volume adds little value.
The solution therefore uses a 51-level Tote Four-Way Shuttle AS/RS. Eight shuttle robots work collaboratively, and system throughput can reach approximately 323 totes per hour. The warehouse also connects production areas across several floors.
Toyota and Yonggui both handle large numbers of automotive parts, but their buildings lead the design in different directions.
Toyota needed to use limited height carefully.
Yonggui needed to make a tall building genuinely useful.
That is why choosing ASRS based only on industry or SKU quantity is rarely enough.
Cold Storage: High Density Matters, but More Flexibility Is Not Always Better
Cold storage brings another cost into the discussion: refrigeration.
Inside a freezer, unused space is still expensive space.
A forklift aisle still needs insulation, refrigeration and ongoing energy consumption even though it holds no product. This is why high-density storage is often attractive in cold-chain projects.
But that does not mean every cold warehouse should use the same shuttle system.
At Readly ,DELIECN implemented a Pallet Four-Way Shuttle ASRS operating at -25°C. The warehouse provides 3,484 pallet locations, while space utilization improved significantly compared with the previous storage method.
Four-way movement gives the system more flexibility inside the rack. Pallets can move between different lanes rather than remaining tied to one storage channel.
That flexibility is useful when inventory allocation and retrieval requirements change frequently.
Xiaoren Fruit uses a Pallet Two-Way Shuttle solution instead.
For some fruit cold-storage operations, pallets can be grouped into relatively large batches and stored in deeper lanes. If the inventory structure is stable and the movement logic is straightforward, the shuttle mainly needs to move pallets in and out of those lanes.
In that case, adding four-way movement may not create enough additional value to justify the extra system complexity.
This is where project design becomes more practical.
The question is not:
Which shuttle is more advanced?
It is:
Which movement capability will actually be used every day?
For some cold stores, flexible cross-lane movement is valuable. For others, simple deep-lane storage is already enough to achieve the desired density and throughput.
The Real Reason to Choose ASRS Usually Appears in Daily Operation
These projects show why ASRS decisions are rarely made well from a product catalogue.
The warehouse normally gives the answer first.
At Zhenglai, the important issue was keeping warehouse logistics closely connected with production and traceability.
At Beiyao, the combination of pallet and tote storage created a different handling requirement.
Toyota had to manage a very large small-parts SKU population within limited vertical space.
Yonggui had a tall building and needed to turn that height into usable storage.
Readly needed to use refrigerated volume more efficiently while keeping pallet access flexible.
Xiaoren Fruit could reach high storage density with a simpler deep-lane shuttle approach.
All of them benefit from automation, but for different reasons.
That is why a company considering ASRS should first look at what is already becoming difficult in the current warehouse.
If warehouse expansion is becoming expensive, the issue may be storage density.
If picking and replenishment take longer as SKU numbers grow, the issue may be access and material movement.
If production increasingly depends on calls, manual coordination and temporary buffers, the issue may be internal logistics.
If inventory, batches and physical locations are becoming harder to keep synchronized, the problem is control.
Once that is clear, it becomes much easier to decide what kind of automation is worth investing in.
A Better ASRS Starts With the Warehouse, Not the Robot
There is no single ASRS design for pharmaceuticals, automotive parts or cold storage.
Industry experience is important because it helps the supplier understand common operating requirements. But it should never replace the analysis of the actual warehouse.
Before selecting equipment, look at the building, the SKU profile, load types, throughput, production rhythm, inventory turnover and the way materials move between processes.
Then decide where automation will make the biggest difference.
Sometimes the answer is a stacker crane.
Sometimes it is a Pallet Four-Way Shuttle or Pallet Two-Way Shuttle.
For small parts, it may be Mini-FlyBox or Tote Four-Way Shuttle.
The right system is the one that solves the warehouse problem without adding capability the operation does not need.
That is ultimately the strongest reason to choose an Automated Storage and Retrieval System: not because automation is more advanced, but because it gives the warehouse a better way to handle the pressures that are already becoming expensive, slow or difficult to manage.
