[Equipment Manufacturing] Weihua Group x Gwall Technology: How a Global Industrial Crane Leader Breaks Through in Smart Warehousing

China Manufacturing 500 company Weihua Group partners with Gwall Technology to advance the digitalization of its warehousing management. Through systematic management restructuring, the project resolves practical challenges including non-standard material control, low AS/RS utilization and inefficient production collaboration — establishing a standardized, visualized and lean warehousing management system that offers a reusable reference for equipment manufacturers' digital transformation.

Making the World Easier

Weihua Group Co., Ltd. (referred to below as Weihua Group) is a large enterprise group focused on developing industrial cranes, offshore engineering equipment, bulk material handling equipment and intelligent production lines. As a globally leading manufacturer of industrial lifting equipment and provider of system solutions, Weihua has ranked first nationwide in the sales volume of overhead and gantry cranes for 19 consecutive years. Today, Weihua Group operates four production bases and seven smart factories across China, with brand value exceeding RMB 36.9 billion.

As the group's production capacity continued to expand and demand for customized products grew, management complexity rose exponentially, and the limitations of its existing warehousing management model became increasingly apparent. Warehousing emerged as a "bottleneck" constraining further gains in production efficiency.

Its core pain points centered on three dimensions: material control, operational efficiency and business collaboration. The potential of automated equipment was not fully unlocked; special materials such as non-standard parts, cables and steel lacked precise measurement methods; and information barriers between business functions made collaboration hard to improve.

Against this backdrop, Weihua Group launched a WMS deployment project. After multiple rounds of solution demonstrations, reviews and technical exchanges, it ultimately selected Gwall Technology as its partner for building intelligent warehousing.

For this WMS project, Gwall drew on its deep understanding of discrete manufacturing scenarios and its precise breakdown of business pain points to clearly map out improvements spanning material identification, storage location optimization, picking processes and end-to-end traceability. In response to core challenges such as "one item, multiple codes," non-standard management and cross-system collaboration, it proposed concrete, actionable technical and management solutions.

Refined Control Across All Material Categories
One item, one code · Standardized control · Full-process traceability

The project builds a whole-category management system that is "clearly classified, process-standardized and data-controlled." It covers every physical asset in the production park — from standard production materials and non-standard parts to spare parts and labor protection supplies — and achieves standardized control across the entire process from procurement inbound, in-warehouse storage and production requisition to finished-goods outbound, markedly improving the rigor and consistency of warehousing management.

• Precise measurement of special materials: configurations tailored to cables, steel and other materials ensure inventory data corresponds accurately.
• Full traceability of key components: a unique-code traceability system records material information from the procurement source through to production requisition.
• Refined project inventory management: project inventory management mechanisms were improved, and efficient combined-material and kitting functions developed.
• Flexible outbound strategies: requisition and outbound strategies can be flexibly configured by production order, project priority and FIFO, ensuring production materials are supplied in a timely and orderly manner — cutting production waiting time by more than 30%.

Storage Location Optimization + Algorithm-Driven Scheduling
AS/RS equipment utilization and operational efficiency up by more than 30%

Weihua Group had already invested in automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) equipment, but the traditional "one item per bin" storage model kept storage location utilization low and left the equipment's potential largely untapped.

Gwall's WMS was highly integrated with the AS/RS equipment, and the team innovatively proposed a single- and double-deep AS/RS solution that breaks the rigid constraint of one material occupying one bin, supporting flexible combined storage by contract, by category and by production priority.

By optimizing the system's scheduling algorithm, the AS/RS can receive and execute multiple put-away and retrieval instructions simultaneously, making operations more efficient and orderly. This maximizes the value of the automated equipment — after system optimization, utilization rose by more than 30%, and the intelligence level of warehousing operations improved markedly.

Integrated Linkage, Global Collaboration
Connecting data flows to support diverse business scenarios

With warehousing as a key hub, Gwall's WMS established deep connections with the group's core business systems, including ERP, MES, SRM and PLM, building an integrated information framework of "interconnected data, collaborative business."

It eliminates information silos and breaks down barriers between systems, ensuring data is automatically and synchronously updated across stages such as procurement inbound, production material preparation and completion reporting.

This keeps production running in an orderly way and supports diverse business scenarios — including supplier consignment, customer-supplied materials management and over-plan (or unplanned) arrival material management — enabling online registration, storage control and requisition traceability for special materials and avoiding the risk of wrong or missed deliveries. Addressing special production requirements, the project standardized the cross-docking direct-to-line process, so materials can be delivered straight to the line as production requires once they arrive, reducing in-warehouse turnover — improving logistics efficiency by 40%.

Echoing Weihua's corporate vision of "making the world easier," the successful delivery of this project is not merely the go-live of a single system, but a deep integration and reshaping of a traditional warehousing and logistics system with digital operations management philosophy.

Even the most complex high-end equipment manufacturing can achieve "effortless" flow through professional solutions — providing solid support for the group's overall digital operations management and enabling it to sustain competitiveness in a complex market environment.

Facing complex discrete manufacturing scenarios, the Gwall Technology team will continue to deepen its industry understanding and provide reusable practical references for more equipment manufacturers — making warehousing management more efficient and production operations more composed.