According to the Global and China Automotive Glass Industry Market Status Research and Development Prospect Analysis Report (2025–2030), the global automotive glass market reached RMB 114.072 billion in 2023 and is expected to exceed RMB 149.2 billion by 2025. From 2020 to 2025, the compound annual growth rate is projected to reach 11%, far exceeding the average level of traditional manufacturing industries, showing a strong growth trend.

Automotive Glass Industry Challenges: From Production Technology to Management Upgrades

Against the backdrop of rapid market expansion, automotive glass manufacturers must not only continuously optimize production technology but also upgrade production support and management processes. In particular, the management of molds, inspection tools, and non-standard tooling equipment—critical for ensuring stable production lines and smooth operations—has become a key link between production demands and delivery schedules. The efficiency and accuracy of tooling management directly impact delivery cycles and service quality, making it a core factor in enhancing enterprise competitiveness.

EFORK Intelligence Helps Industry Leaders Achieve Smart Warehousing

A leading global integrated glass manufacturer, with years of expertise in high-quality float glass, automotive glass, and energy-efficient architectural glass, has built an integrated industrial chain covering raw material procurement, glass production, deep processing, manufacturing, and sales. To further improve automotive glass tooling warehouse management, ensure product forming quality, increase production plan completion rates, and shorten delivery cycles, the company introduced EFORK’s Intelligent Automotive Glass Tooling Smart Warehousing Solution.

This solution integrates an automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS), RGV (Rail-Guided Vehicle) shuttles, and WMS/WCS intelligent logistics systems, enabling end-to-end automated management of molds and inspection tools from production to use at the bending furnace—effectively overcoming multiple bottlenecks of traditional warehousing.

Key Issues in Traditional Warehouse Management

• Low space utilization and limited storage capacity
  Molds and inspection tools are large and irregularly shaped. Traditional horizontal or floor stacking wastes a significant amount of vertical space. With increasing orders and frequent product changes, limited capacity can no longer meet production needs, causing site congestion and obstructing material flow.

• Low handling efficiency, high labor dependency, and safety hazards
  Manual or forklift handling in traditional warehouses makes transporting large tooling cumbersome and time-consuming. Especially after the bending furnace process, tooling remains hot, posing burn risks and potential equipment damage, while delays in manual scheduling disrupt production rhythms.
• Difficult positioning, disorganized management, and delayed information
  With a wide variety of tooling and complex numbering, the absence of digital management often leads to misplaced or lost items. Manual ledger updates are slow, making real-time tracking and status visualization impossible—hindering tooling allocation and production scheduling.

• Low informatization and lack of full lifecycle traceability
  Without real-time visibility into inventory quantities, locations, and usage status, maintenance reminders and scrap alerts are absent, resulting in uneven utilization, inadequate upkeep, and even overuse—causing quality fluctuations and safety risks.

EFORK’s Smart Warehousing Solution and Achievements

By deploying an AS/RS, RGV shuttles, and WMS/WCS systems, the solution enables centralized, high-efficiency storage and automated handling of over 6,000 automotive glass molds and inspection tools—significantly improving warehouse efficiency, safety, and on-site management, while ensuring stable, precise material supply for production lines.

• Significant improvement in storage space utilization
  The AS/RS enables three-dimensional centralized storage, boosting space utilization from 50% to 85%, effectively easing capacity constraints and creating room for production expansion.
• Precise synchronization with production schedules
  The WCS integrates deeply with production planning, automatically issuing tooling retrieval instructions that match the bending process rhythm, enhancing coordination and responsiveness across the production line.
• Ensured continuous material supply for bending processes
  Equipped with 24/7 operating stacker cranes, molds and inspection tools circulate efficiently and are delivered precisely, ensuring uninterrupted supply for bending furnaces and stable production in critical processes.

• Full lifecycle digital management of molds
  The WMS seamlessly connects with the ERP system to digitize the entire mold lifecycle—from warehousing, storage, retrieval, and maintenance to scrapping. Production preparation time is reduced by 30%, order response speed increases by 50%, and management gains timely, accurate data for more scientific decision-making.

Stable Operations Supporting High-Quality Development

The automotive glass tooling smart warehousing project has been running smoothly, successfully overcoming traditional management bottlenecks, and significantly enhancing storage space utilization, logistics efficiency, and safety. It has laid a solid foundation for the deep integration of production rhythm and smart warehousing.

Looking ahead, EFORK will continue to leverage advanced intelligent logistics technology and system integration capabilities to further explore the automotive parts sector, driving manufacturing enterprises toward digitalization, automation, and lean transformation—becoming a core force in promoting high-quality industry development.

EFORK – The Enabler of Digital Smart Logistics in the Automotive Industry

With four core capabilities—full-scenario planning, flexible logistics, lean management, and end-to-end services—EFORK combines AS/RS systems, mobile robots, and WMS/WCS software and hardware to create flexible, efficient digital smart logistics solutions for the automotive industry, empowering transformation across internal logistics and manufacturing systems.

Today, EFORK has established deep cooperation with leading automakers such as BYD, Chery, and Yutong, continuously driving the intelligent transformation of automotive manufacturing and setting new industry benchmarks.