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YamatoHK
LogisticsHow Yamato HK cut operating costs by 83.3% by switching to Serverless with AntStack!
About YamatoHK
Yamato Logistics (HK) Ltd. is a member of the Yamato group, Japan’s largest delivery company known for its international freight forwarding services, door-to-door delivery services, logistics services, and local/international moving services.
With a global footprint, they offer optimum supply chain solutions and innovative logistics services.
The Challenge
YamatoHK was running on physical servers with old and complex technology to manage their Package and Warehouse management systems which needed a significant overhaul.
YamatoHK customers across the globe were expecting real-time data integration and quick turnaround times from their logistics partners. But physical servers and manual processes could not support automation, so scanning packages and adding their information to the system needed to be done manually.
Developing a Serverless application that could integrate with their scanning machines became crucial for their speed and efficiency.
“While running the server in Hong Kong, the process had many bottlenecks and single-point failures due to hardware issues. We were running our applications on a physical server and wanted to migrate to newer technology for a more stable service.” --- Samson Yu Chun Pong, IT, Yamato
Our Goals
To enhance their delivery and warehousing services, Yamato wanted to migrate to seamless, cutting-edge technology. With thousands of parcels delivered daily, Yamato Logistics decided to switch to a serverless platform and partnered with AntStack to improve their logistical solutions.
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Their primary goal was to boost the performance of their information systems and enhance integrated logistics that incorporated warehousing, order processing, tracking, and transport.
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Yamato’s server-based system had high operational costs and could not be scaled. Serving a global network, Yamato wanted a stable server with no functional issues to provide quality service and a scalable solution for their customers worldwide.
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Their goal was to create an agile serverless solution that would allow them to scale up and down without worrying about hardware and server management.
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The old system made inventory report generation cumbersome and time-consuming. With AntStack, Yamato sought a one-stop solution to inventory management concerns.
Impact
On-demand Model of AWS
- In six months, Yamato developed a PMS (Parcel Management System) in collaboration with AntStack. During the initial stages of the PMS project, Yamato was looking to ramp up bandwidth quickly. Once the product matures, they would run down the bandwidth with the ondemand model of AWS.
- During the initial stages of the PMS project, Yamato was looking to ramp up bandwidth quickly. Once the product matures, they would run down the bandwidth with the ondemand model of AWS.
- AntStack’s unique serverless approach allowed Yamato to Deploy an Evolvable Architecture and Scale resources up & down as required.
Robust and Scalable Solution
- The Yamato team had to work over the weekends due to server issues, downtime in the electricity grid, and other disruptions.
- With a serverless architecture, AWS handles hardware management, scalability, and elasticity seamlessly and efficiently, making the system remarkably stable.
- As a result, they don’t have to worry about managing hardware and servers as they scale up.
Enhanced Performance with Faster Processing Time
- Yamato wanted to upgrade to a seamless, newer technology to meet the demands of logistics customers since the manual processes resulted in slow turnaround times.
- AntStack’s one-stop serverless solution came in with a Parcel Management System (PMS) that has upgraded to a much faster, cost-efficient serverless offering very high-speed service with enormous overall performance gains.
Powered by Automation
- Real-time data transfer and integration were not possible with the old application.
- To onboard customers faster, they wanted to accelerate the integration process using APIs with a backend in Singapore. Using Anstack’s serverless solution, they could achieve automated processes with high-speed scanning machines.
- As a result, Yamato could offer its customers faster onboarding, reliable services, newer technology, and effortless processing.
A startup within the organisation
AntStack continues to help the Yamato team as Partners by offering them excellent support and knowledge transfer.
“We wanted to partner with AntStack to leverage their expertise, grow our team and focus on AWS. Developers in HK are rare and very expensive. Working in collaboration with the AntStack team, our team gained a lot of experience in backend Lambda, step function, API gateway deployments, group template using SAM CLI and confirmation, technology related to security, and much more”, said Samson.
Now Yamato’s in-house development team utilizes Elasticsearch with AWS to store, search, and analyze massive volumes of data quickly and in real-time for the Parcel Management System (PMS).
Results that speak volumes
AntStack helped Yamato’s management systems improve critical business processes with the latest AWS Cloud technology.
They are now receiving a few thousand orders per day, hoping to reach 10,000 step functions everyday and millions in the future.
- Launched a secure Parcel Management System in just six months.
- New features were released every 2 weeks and showed an increase of 70%.
- Elevated performance that supports expanding target volume growth.
- The product could handle about 110k parcels per month, targeting up to 300k parcels.
- Ongoing evolution into Warehouse management system (WMS).
- Cost-effective, one-stop solution for all logistical requirements.
In their words
Samson Yu Chun Pong
Head of IT, Yamato
