Traditional Medicine Warehouse Automation for High-SKU Herbal Materials

Traditional medicine warehouses need more than basic storage space. They must manage many herbal material categories, multiple specifications, different packaging formats, batch information, inventory visibility, FIFO rules, and picking accuracy.

For manufacturers of herbal medicine materials and decoction pieces, Warehouse Management can become especially complex. A single warehouse may need to store bulk raw materials, semi-finished materials, small-package products, and high-SKU picking items at the same time. If the warehouse still depends heavily on manual storage and manual picking, it can become difficult to maintain efficiency, accuracy, and traceability.

Common Warehouse Challenges

Traditional medicine warehouses often face several operational challenges:

• large SKU quantities
• multiple material specifications
• different storage units, such as frames, totes, cartons, or pallets
• strict batch and quality control requirements
• slow manual picking and repeated order checking
• low storage density in traditional shelf or floor storage layouts
• difficulty in FIFO execution
• limited traceability across inbound, storage, picking, and outbound processes

As business scale grows, these challenges can directly affect warehouse turnover, order response speed, and material quality management.

Automated Warehouse Solution

A traditional medicine Warehouse Automation solution can be designed according to material size, SKU structure, storage density target, and picking frequency.

A complete system may include:

• Stacker Crane Asrs for bulk material frame storage
• tote four-way Shuttle Asrs for high-SKU small-item storage
• conveyors and lifters
• barcode recognition
• weighing and profile inspection
• WMS for inventory, batch, and traceability management
• WCS for equipment scheduling and task execution
• API integration with ERP or MES

In one traditional medicine warehouse project, DELIECN combined stacker crane ASRS and tote four-way Shuttle Asrs to support both bulk storage and small-package goods-to-person picking.

Why Two ASRS Systems Work Better

Different herbal materials require different storage and handling methods.

Bulk materials, large containers, and material frames are more suitable for stacker crane ASRS. This system uses vertical space efficiently and supports stable storage for heavier load units.

Small-package herbs and high-frequency picking items are more suitable for tote four-way shuttle ASRS. Totes can be managed as independent inventory units and delivered automatically to picking stations when orders are released.

This combined design allows the warehouse to handle both large-volume storage and high-frequency picking within one coordinated system.

Value for Traditional Medicine Warehouses

A well-designed automated warehouse can help traditional medicine companies:

• increase storage density
• reduce manual searching and walking distance
• improve batch traceability
• support FIFO storage and outbound logic
• improve picking accuracy
• reduce labor intensity
• provide real-time inventory visibility
• support more standardized warehouse management
• connect storage, picking, and production or order fulfillment processes

By using WMS and WCS together, warehouse tasks can be managed digitally and executed automatically by stacker cranes, tote shuttle robots, lifters, conveyors, and picking stations.

Project Reference

In a traditional medicine warehouse automation project, DELIECN designed a combined ASRS solution for herbal medicine storage and picking.

The solution included:

• stacker crane ASRS for bulk material storage
• tote four-way shuttle ASRS for high-SKU tote storage
• goods-to-person picking stations
• WMS and WCS software
• barcode recognition, weighing, and profile inspection

The system helped the customer improve storage density, strengthen batch traceability, reduce manual picking pressure, and build a more visible warehouse management process.

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