Ruijie Wireless AP: Helping Fresh Fruits in Baiguoyuan to Extend Their Expiration Date

The story of "A horse gallops across the sky, making the concubine smile, but no one knows that it is the lychees coming" is well-known to everyone. In the era when the cold chain of warehousing was not well developed, countless fast horses were needed to transport a bunch of fresh lychees to the imperial city.

Today, mature cold chain transportation technology has replaced the horses at the post stations, but what if what needs to be transported is not only lychees, but also apples, bananas, pineapples, strawberries... and the destination has changed from the imperial city to more than 4,000 stores across the country?

The Wisdom of “Survival”

Shenzhen Baiguoyuan Industrial (Group) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Baiguoyuan), which is known as the earliest fruit retail chain in China (source: Enterprise Baidu Encyclopedia), has consolidated its high-end fruit brand in the market by relying on the standardized construction of its stores.

In order to ensure product supply to more than 5,000 stores across the country and continue to expand the market, Baiguoyuan’s self-built “smart warehouse” came into being.

Take the Baiguoyuan Agricultural Products Primary Processing Dongguan Distribution Center as an example. Building 1 of the center covers an area of ​​3,000 square meters, with a total construction area of ​​21,000 square meters on 7 floors. In such a huge warehouse, unmanned forklifts, handheld barcode scanners and other equipment further improve the storage efficiency of fruits to ensure that every fruit on the shelf can maintain the maximum freshness.

Unlike general goods storage, the shelf life of fruits requires very strict control. Every increase in speed contributes to product quality; while jams, failures, and delays may directly threaten the quality of an entire batch of fruits.

For this reason, a sufficiently stable production network is crucial for the warehousing system!

“Grab” the shelf life of fresh fruits

In order to ensure smooth operation of the AGV carts (for transportation) and PDA barcode scanners used in the warehouse, Baiguoyuan carefully selected its network partners. In the end, after multiple rounds of field tests, Ruijie Networks' solution stood out and worked with Baiguoyuan to "get the freshest" fruits.

First, in the unmanned forklift area on the 1st to 4th floors, Ruijie engineers used the same-frequency networking technology to radiate SSIDs to the unmanned forklifts, and used the same-frequency networking technology to virtualize multiple physical APs in the network into a large "virtual AP". From the perspective of the unmanned forklift, a same-frequency group composed of multiple APs is "a large AP". During its movement, it always thinks that it is always associated with the same AP and completely "ignores" roaming, thus achieving the effect of "zero roaming".

In the actual test, the vehicle accessed roaming and switched 50 times, with no packet loss and a latency of less than 10ms. All operations of the vehicle ran smoothly without any signs of lag or slowdown. On this basis, the scientifically deployed AP also provided effective support for barcode scanners, office networks, and guest networks.

Challenge: Differentiated freshness of fruits

Like almost all food ingredients, the storage and transportation of fruits requires every second. In addition, different fruits have very different requirements for the preservation environment such as temperature, humidity, ventilation, etc.: Cherries usually need to be stored at -1℃ to 0.5℃ and 90%-95% relative humidity, bananas need 11-13℃ under the same humidity conditions, winter dates need to be sealed and decompressed...

The "living conditions" of various fruits pose new challenges to network equipment, especially how to deploy the network in low-temperature cold storage. In the test, Ruijie outdoor AP took on this important task.

In actual scenarios, in addition to direct damage to equipment caused by sub-zero temperatures, condensation water formed by the temperature difference when the cold storage door is opened and closed can also cause ordinary APs to become damp, leading to malfunctions.

Ruijie has extensive experience in the cold chain industry, and its repeatedly tested product designs enable it to adapt to a variety of extreme environments. Ruijie's outdoor AP has successfully "upgraded" to outdoor and cold storage AP equipment for the Baiguoyuan smart warehouse with its IP68 protection level (the highest protection level in the industry).

In order to adapt to the gradual increase in the number of cities covered by the company, self-built warehousing has become the main warehousing model for the future development of Baiguoyuan. The fruits that are much fresher than those of its peers will make Baiguoyuan a top-notch reputation in the industry. At present, in addition to warehousing scenarios, Ruijie Networks has also launched further cooperation with Baiguoyuan on the store network. Behind the high-quality standardized stores, a whole high-quality standardized network has also been built, jointly contributing fresher and higher-quality fruits to the tables of domestic people.