Hayao Pharmaceutical Headquarters digitizes nationwide distribution on NiuX TMS
Two years after going live at Hayao's commercial distribution arm, NiuInfo was invited back — this time to digitize the group's pharmaceutical manufacturing logistics. The scope: nationwide shipment visibility, one-click dispatch across SF Express and Deppon, a flexible billing engine for industry-specific rate logic, and LLM-based rule configuration for complex pharma pricing scenarios.
Two years in — and a wider invitation
NiuInfo deployed TMS at Hayao’s commercial distribution arm two years ago. The system has run cleanly since — visible, predictable, quietly delivering. That track record is why the group’s pharmaceutical manufacturing headquarters chose NiuInfo when it decided to digitize its own logistics operation: the decision was less about features and more about trust already earned inside the group.
This second deployment extends NiuInfo’s footprint from Hayao’s sales and distribution into its industrial production side — closing the supply chain loop from factory to customer under one shared platform.
The problem: pharma logistics has opinions
Pharmaceutical distribution doesn’t look like general freight. A few things make it distinctive, and they all drove the design:
- Regulatory paper trail. Every shipment needs a documented chain of custody — origin, handover, in-transit milestones, delivery confirmation. Gaps cause audit pain, not just customer complaints.
- Pricing lives in the contract, not the rate card. Pharma customers and carriers negotiate pricing by channel, by region, by product class — with exceptions stacked on exceptions. Hard-coded rate tables don’t survive contact with reality.
- Mixed carrier ecosystem. Hayao uses integrated carriers (SF Express, Deppon, and others) alongside regional specialists. Operations need one dispatch workflow, not N.
What NiuInfo deployed
Four capabilities drove the business case:
1. End-to-end shipment visibility. Every shipment from Hayao’s manufacturing headquarters is tracked from order release through in-transit to signed delivery, nationwide. Exceptions surface in minutes, not after a customer call.
2. Open carrier ecosystem. NiuX TMS pre-integrates with major Chinese carriers including SF Express and Deppon. Hayao dispatches to multiple carriers with one-click handoff — the orchestration layer handles format translation, tendering, and confirmation.
3. A billing engine that handles pharma complexity. The system ships with a flexible rate engine: multi-dimensional pricing, exception handling, automated reconciliation, and online settlement. Finance no longer chases signed-off rate sheets from every region.
4. LLM-assisted rule configuration. This is the interesting part. Complex pharma pricing rules — previously written up in email threads and hand-coded by the TMS vendor — can now be described in natural language and translated into executable rules by an integrated LLM. Business users configure, IT reviews. The time from “we negotiated a new contract” to “it’s live in the system” shrinks dramatically.
Why the group came back
Hayao is a sophisticated buyer — the first publicly listed pharmaceutical company in China doesn’t lack options. What earned NiuInfo the second contract wasn’t a pitch deck. It was the operational boringness of the first deployment: it worked, it kept working, and the commercial distribution team stopped thinking about their TMS as a thing that needed managing.
For the manufacturing headquarters, that operational confidence mattered more than any feature comparison. Regulated industries can’t afford heroic go-lives followed by months of firefighting.
Why this matters for pharma and healthcare operators
If your pharmaceutical operation is running on legacy transport tooling plus spreadsheets, three things from the Hayao deployment are directly transferable:
- An open carrier ecosystem beats a carrier lock-in. Your mix of national integrated carriers plus regional specialists is a feature, not a problem to eliminate. The TMS should orchestrate it, not force you into a single provider.
- Your pricing logic is your pricing logic. Look for a rate engine that flexes to your contracts — not one that asks you to flatten complex pricing into rigid rate tables.
- Pick a partner who ships boringly. In regulated operations, the most valuable thing a TMS vendor can offer is a track record of deployments that nobody talks about, because nothing went wrong.
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