DC Velocity - July 2016

newsworthy

22 DC VELOCITY JULY 2016 www.dcvelocity.com

Seeking ways to boost productivity in its distribution centers, express shipping and logistics firm Deutsche Post DHL Corp. is testing a fleet of collaborative robots from Rethink Robotics Inc. in an unspecified number of its warehouses.

Bonn, Germany-based DHL is integrating the robots into warehousing operations such as co-packing and value-added tasks such as assembly, kitting, packaging, and pre-retail services, the company said late last month.

DHL’s intent is to free up human employees for “higher-value work” by using robots to help them with repetitive tasks such as packaging, Adrian Kumar, vice president of solutions design North America at DHL Supply Chain, said in a statement. “By deploying these robots to work in tandem with humans, we can ensure our production lines are adjusting to changes and running more efficiently year-round,” Kumar said.

Rethink Robotics is a Boston-based company founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer science professor and iRobot Corp. founder Rodney Brooks. The company makes collaborative robots, known as “cobots,” that are designed to work alongside human laborers without being separated by traditional cages or other safety barriers.

DHL is testing how to integrate both of Rethink Robotics’ main products into its facilities. They include Baxter, a dual-arm collaborative robot for repetitive tasks such as discrete part handling, and Sawyer, a model designed for more precise tasks, such as packaging.

PH O T O C O U R T E S Y O F R E T H IN K R O B O T I C S IN C .

Shippers and carriers are dragging their feet to transition to an information exchange standard that could help them deliver better performance than the traditional electronic data interchange (EDI) method, according to a recent report from the University of Tennessee.

The new approach uses application programming interface (API) technology to allow shippers, carriers, and third-party logistics service providers (3PLs) to swiftly exchange data about trucking transactions. This could help improve supply chain visibility and boost profits, since it would empower businesses to instantly request rates, dispatch shipments, track freight, and confirm deliveries, said the study’s co-author, Karl Manrodt, a professor of logistics and supply chain management at Georgia College & State University.

However, many transportation companies are slow to change, citing reasons such as IT cost, the complexity of changing related platforms, a lack of trust in the new standard, and a reluctance to be the first to change, he said.

“Another reason for the delay in API adoption is that it will allow carriers to move toward dynamic pricing, and some shippers are concerned that their prices will go up,” Manrodt said in a recent interview. He said, however, that the prevailing prices would more accurately reflect the realities of the marketplace, which would benefit all parties.

Shippers and providers may be dragged into API adoption by e-commerce retailers demanding rapid-fire delivery performance, said Manrodt. EDI was not designed to support that level of agility, so many businesses are looking at new options like APIs, he said.

“Shippers and carriers who use EDI are acting on stale data,” said
Manrodt. “In a lot of ways, this is faux, or fake, visibility.”
Similar to the technology that powers consumer smartphone apps,
the API messaging format allows data to flow from one computer
platform to another in seconds. That is much faster than the batch-pro-
cessed and error-prone EDI standard, which was first developed at the
end of World War II and grew to become the primary data exchange
technology for supply chain operations.

Most transportation companies that make the jump from EDI to API hire a technology provider to add the platform to their transportation management systems (TMS) or other platforms, since that option is less expensive than hiring programmers for the relatively simple task, Manrodt said.

Because the transition from EDI to API will take time, early adopters will have to be “bilingual” for a while, communicating data through both standards until their business partners also upgrade, said Mary Holcomb, associate professor of logistics at the University of Tennessee and the report’s co-author.

The March report is titled “The Road to Profitability Is a Web Service Connection” and is available at http://forums.utk.edu/research/docu-ments/FreightAPIs.pdf. (See also “The other infrastructure problem,” Outbound, p. 128.)