Communications of the ACM
DHL Doubles Robots as Humans Alone Can't Handle Holiday Crunch
DHL also created eight resourcing centers around the U.S. to recruit and train workers. Other moves to better cope with soaring demand include investing in fulfillment centers closer to customers, and increasing reliance on data analytics to better foreca
Credit: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
DHL's supply-chain unit has doubled the number of robots it uses in the U.S. to about 1,500 ahead of the holidays, in addition to hiring 15,000 seasonal workers.
The move has enabled the parcel delivery company to keep up with orders even as bottlenecks and labor costs grow.
DHL's Oscar de Bok said, "The supply-chain disruption that we're seeing at the moment is not a one-time thing. Because of the growth of e-commerce, supply chains are now organized differently because you get major hops and jumps at the end of the supply chain, because that's the end-consumer. All the stores and the wholesalers and distributors that used to be in between are now less, and that's why you get more disruptions in supply chains."
From Bloomberg
View Full Article - May Require Paid Subscription
Abstracts Copyright © 2021 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA
No entries found