newsmakers
FedEx expanding ground
delivery to seven days a
week
In response to soaring demand from the
fast-growing e-commerce market, FedEx Corp.
is expanding its FedEx Ground parcel delivery
service to seven days a week. FedEx Ground
already provides seven-days-a-week service
during the holiday peak shopping season. The
expanded service will cover “the majority of
the U.S. population” when it
launches in January 2020, the
company said.
In other moves, Memphis,
Tenn.-based FedEx is integrating its “FedEx SmartPost”
package offering—marketed
as a “cost-effective service for
your low-weight residential
shipments and returns”—into
its standard FedEx Ground operations. The
company will also expand its large-package
capabilities, mirroring similar moves by transportation and logistics service provider XPO
Logistics Inc. and others.
By extending its parcel delivery service to
seven days a week, FedEx continues to ratchet
up its offerings to match those of rival carriers.
In 2018, the company expanded its domestic
FedEx Ground operations from five to six days
a week year round in a move to match logistics
and delivery giant UPS Inc., which launched
that feature in 2017.
The latest announcement comes as e-commerce trend-setter Amazon.com Inc. moves
forward with plans to cut the standard delivery
time for its Amazon Prime subscription service
from two days to one day. The announcement effectively tightened the thumb-screws
on logistics service providers trying to counter
“the Amazon effect” of rising consumer expectations for fast, free delivery.
Despite those challenges, FedEx thinks its
new approach will be both effective and profitable. In addition to keeping FedEx competitive
with its customers and competitors, the changes will also increase the company’s utilization
of its assets and enhance its delivery density,
according to Raj Subramaniam, FedEx Corp.’s
president and chief operating officer.
E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. has developed two sleek
new warehouse robot models called Xanthus and Pegasus, which
are designed to improve safety and efficiency in its fulfillment
operations, the company said.
The Seattle-based company has already deployed 800 of the
Pegasus units in its facilities—a small portion of the 200,000
robotic-drive units it operates globally but a number it intends to
rapidly increase. Those robots are concentrated at the 50 robotic
fulfillment centers Amazon
operates as part of its global
network of 175 fulfillment
centers and more than 40
sort centers, the company
said.
The launch comes at a time
when Amazon is investing
heavily in its distribution network to further cut order
fulfillment times. Its quest
to ratchet up service speed
has propelled Amazon into
a leadership role when it comes to automating fulfillment operations—a journey that began with its acquisition of bot-maker
Kiva Systems LLC for $775 million in 2012.
The latest units represent an enhancement to the Kiva operational model, which uses the squat Kiva robotic units to ferry
loaded racks of goods to people, the company said at its re:MARS
conference in Las Vegas. The Xanthus unit, which boasts a thinner
profile than the Kiva bot, is the company’s “first major redesign
of [its] core drive-based robot,” creating a common, sled-based
foundation that serves as a mobile, modular base that can carry
a wide range of potential attachments, according to Amazon.
Amazon also unveiled its Pegasus drive unit, saying the product
is bringing robotics to its sortation buildings for the first time.
Pegasus also moves beyond the Kiva operational model, thanks
to its ability to sort and route individual packages instead of moving tall storage pods, the company said.
—Ben Ames
Amazon unveils Xanthus and Pegasus
fulfillment robots
go figure …
$18.7 billion
The price paid by private equity group Blackstone Group LP
to buy 179 million square feet of urban logistics space from
Singapore-based GLP Pte., nearly doubling its U.S. industrial
property and warehouse holdings.
SOURCE: BLACKSTONE GROUP
