A warehouse can have enough floor space and still struggle to support faster delivery. At YFY Paper's Nanjing facility, the constraint was not the building itself, but the way goods were stored and moved.
Before the upgrade, forklift drivers handled most internal transport and searched for the required pallets based largely on experience. As market demand and order structures became more complex, locating and retrieving goods came to account for 60%–70% of the total shipping process. More handling movements did not necessarily result in faster dispatch; instead, they increased congestion and placed further pressure on turnover and delivery lead times.
The building offered a clear opportunity for improvement. Although the warehouse was 9–11 meters high, less than four meters of that height was being used because the existing operating model depended on manual forklifts and floor-level storage.
These conditions formed the starting point for YFY Nanjing's smart warehousing project, which officially went live on August 18.
The Project Began with the Shipping Bottleneck
It would have been easy to treat the project as a storage-capacity expansion. In practice, simply adding more pallet locations would not have resolved the main problem.
The real challenge was how to retrieve the correct goods more quickly, move them through a busy production environment, and maintain a stable flow from production output to final dispatch. Empty pallets also needed to return without interfering with inbound and outbound operations.
DELIECN therefore planned the project around the complete material flow rather than around one automated storage area.
The completed system integrates pallet four-way shuttle robots, latent AGVs, forklift AGVs, WMS, WCS, and a 3D visualized central control system. Together, they connect automated handling, inbound storage, order-based retrieval, outbound shipping, and empty-pallet return.
The system now supports more than 3,000 pallet transfers per day, operates continuously on a 24/7 basis, and has achieved zero cargo damage. More importantly, it has changed how the factory organizes its warehouse operations.
From Forklift Experience to System-Directed Execution
Before implementation, warehouse decisions depended heavily on operators knowing where goods had been placed and how they could be retrieved. Mixed storage and limited location visibility made inventory expansion difficult. Manual data entry also meant that physical stock movements and system records were not always synchronized immediately.
After the upgrade, WMS assigns storage locations, manages inventory, and generates warehouse tasks according to defined rules. It exchanges relevant business information with YFY's ERP, FEMS, and other information systems. WCS then coordinates shuttle robots, AGVs, and other automated equipment to execute those tasks.
This division of responsibilities is important. WMS determines what needs to happen from an inventory and order perspective, while WCS manages how the equipment completes it. The result is a standardized operating logic that does not depend on each driver making an individual decision.
Materials can now be assigned to clearer storage zones, inventory records are updated as operations take place, and each task leaves a traceable system record. This gives managers a more reliable basis for stock checks, order preparation, and operational review.
The role of warehouse employees has also changed. Instead of spending most of their time driving forklifts, searching for goods, and repeating transport tasks, a smaller team can focus on exception handling, system supervision, and operational coordination.
This is a more realistic measure of automation value than labor reduction alone: people are moved away from repetitive handling and toward tasks that require judgment.
Using the Building More Effectively
The original warehouse used less than four meters of its available 9–11-meter height. This was not unusual for a forklift-based operation, where visibility, turning space, and safe access often limit how high and how densely goods can be stored.
The pallet four-way shuttle system enables YFY Nanjing to use more of the building's vertical space while reducing the need for wide forklift aisles inside the storage area. AGVs handle movement between production, storage, and shipping zones along planned routes.
This redesigned flow reduces cross-traffic and congestion. It also separates storage from manual vehicle movement, providing a more controlled operating environment than the previous model, in which forklifts moved frequently through crowded areas under time pressure.
The improvement is therefore not only a question of fitting more pallets into the same building. Better use of height creates additional capacity without relying on proportional floor-space expansion, while clearer routes improve the predictability of daily operations.
Visibility That Extends Beyond the Warehouse Screen
YFY Nanjing's 3D visualized central control system brings equipment positions, task progress, inventory status, material information, alarms, and maintenance records into one interface.
The value of this digital twin is not the 3D presentation itself. Its value lies in giving operations and maintenance teams a shared view of what is happening across production transfer, storage, picking, shipping, and empty-pallet return.
If a task is delayed, the team can identify the affected equipment and process more quickly. Historical records can then be used to examine recurring issues, plan preventive maintenance, and adjust operating strategies.
This creates a foundation for future data applications, including trend analysis, risk warning, and AI-assisted operational improvement. DELIECN's work in system architecture, interface development, functional customization, and commissioning is supported by its CMMI-DEV V3.0 Maturity Level 5 appraisal.
A Transformation Measured by Operational Change
The project involved YFY's management teams, the Nanjing facility, its Taipei IT team, DELIECN, and other partners. Despite the number of system interfaces and the demands of implementation within an operating factory, the project reached operational readiness three months ahead of the original schedule.
At the handover ceremony, YFY presented DELIECN with a Plaque of Appreciation for its contribution to planning, solution design, implementation, system integration, commissioning, and go-live support.
The China Packaging Federation also recognized YFY Nanjing as a Smart Warehousing and Digitalization Demonstration Factory for the Corrugated Packaging Industry.
What makes the project relevant to the wider industry is not one robot, one software platform, or one performance figure. It is the operational change achieved across the warehouse: from manual searching to system-directed retrieval, from mixed storage to defined locations, from fragmented records to real-time synchronization, and from underused height to a more structured use of space.
For corrugated packaging manufacturers facing faster order cycles and growing product complexity, this is the more important lesson: effective automation begins with understanding where time is being lost, then redesigning equipment, information, and workflows around the complete production-to-shipping process.
