DC Velocity - January 2019

18 DC VELOCITY JANUARY 2019 www.dcvelocity.com newsworthy

DHL Supply Chain, the contract logistics arm of Deutsche Post DHL Group, will spend $300 million to deploy emerging technologies in 350 of its 430 North American facilities and transportation control towers in an effort to help its clients address e-commerce and omnichannel challenges, the company said in December.

The move will be an expansion of DHL’s current application of emerging technologies at approximately 85 of those facilities, the Westerville, Ohio-based unit said.

The technologies to be deployed include robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality, robotics process automation, the Internet of Things (Io T), and DHL’s proprietary end-to-end visibility solution, MySupplyChain, the company said.

“While many technologies are already in active deployment, collaborative piece-picking robots, artificial intelligence applications, and self-driving vehicles stand to have the most promise today,” DHL Supply Chain North America CEO Scott Sureddin said in a release.

DHL declined to name the specific vendors that will supply the tech-
nologies, saying only that they “will vary by customer needs, based on the
outcomes of research and pilot programs completed by DHL’s internal
innovation teams and collaboration with dozens of external innovators.”
DHL said it is making the investment in order to help its customers min-
imize complexity, remove capacity constraints, and maximize service to
their customers, all while minimizing infrastructure costs and maximizing
service levels. Previous pilots have produced productivity gains upward of
25 percent and throughput capacity gains of 30 percent, it said.

The company will spread its large investment across a variety of emerg-
ing technology providers in order to meet the various needs of its clients,
Fred Takavitz, senior vice president for retail, DHL Supply Chain North
America, said in an interview. “We want to help our customers meet their
profit goals,” he said. “But those needs are going to be different for cus-
tomers [depending on] whether they are in the retail, consumer packaged
goods (CPG), life sciences, or automotive sectors. It also depends where a
company is on its e-commerce journey.”
While DHL has conducted a number of small pilots with emerging tech-
nologies in recent months, it is now ramping up its investment in the space
because logistics tech vendors have recently moved past the experimental
stage and into full commercial production of their technologies, Carl Behn,
vice president for information technology, DHL Supply Chain Americas,
said in an interview. “The products they are bringing to the table [today]
are at a whole other level of reliability that simply wasn’t there in previous
years,” Behn said.

Kuebix, a transportation management system (TMS) provider, has won Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine’s Green Supply Chain award for 2018. The annual award recognizes companies for making sustainability a core part of their supply chain strategy. … Market research firm Frost & Sullivan has recognized Blue Ridge Global with a 2018 Customer Value Leadership award, naming Blue Ridge the Best Cloud-native Supply Chain Planning Solution for Distributors. … Container transportation and shipping company CMA CGM Group has been awarded the “Gold Recognition Level” for the fourth consecutive year by Ecovadis, a ratings agency that evaluates companies on the basis of corporate responsibility. CMA CGM earned the award for its environmental performance, labor and human rights practices, and fair business practices. … TVH in the Americas, a manufacturer of replacement parts and accessories for the material handling and equipment industries, has earned the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association’s (MHEDA) Most Valuable Supplier award for 2018. The award recognizes companies that have demonstrated an exemplary commitment to their dealer network, their employees, and their community. … Keypoint Intelligence has presented Toshiba America Business Solutions, a provider of document solutions for the logistics industry, with the BLI PaceSetter 2018–2019 award for the logistics market.