Help on the Horizon: How Digitalization Can Relieve Holiday Supply Chain Stress

Sharp spikes in orders along with rising service expectations and an increasingly tight labor market have combined to make each holiday season a little more challenging than the last.

Will that trend continue in 2019 or will the supply chain digitalization movement finally enable distribution networks to meet rising customer expectations with more control and less labor?

The Current State of Digitalization

Earlier this year, DHL Supply Chain surveyed nearly 350 supply chain and operations professionals regarding their current and future digitalization plans. The survey encompassed two types of supply chain digitalization – physical/mechanical and information/analytical.

The results demonstrate the progress that is being made, but also highlight how much work is left to be done.

Only 7 percent of those surveyed are not pursuing some form of digitalization strategy so it’s clear there is widespread recognition in the industry of the value of digital technologies.

But the maturity of those efforts varies widely. A majority of organizations are still in the development or proof-of-concept stage for both information/analytics (59 percent) and mechanical/physical (51 percent) digitalization initiatives. Only 14 percent consider themselves in the “advanced” or “transformational” stage in regard to informational/analytics technologies and that number drops to 11 percent for physical/mechanical systems.

To dive deeper into this research, read the DHL Supply Chain research brief, “Digitalization and the Supply Chain: Where Are We and What’s Next?”

Robots to the Rescue

With so many organizations still in the early stages of digitalization, it’s fair to ask how much can really be accomplished before the next holiday season rolls around.

The answer is more than you would expect. That’s because of one particular physical system that has emerged as a real solution to the productivity, scalability and speed pressures imposed by the holidays. That solution is collaborative robotics.

Robotics provide a flexible, scalable, and relatively low capital investment alternative to full warehouse automation. And that, apparently, is no longer a secret among supply chain professionals.

Robotics were cited as the most important physical technology by participants in our digitalization survey. Sixty-three percent ranked robotics as extremely or very important; 23 percentage points higher than the second-ranking technology, AGVs.

As the world’s leading contract logistics organization, DHL Supply Chain has been actively evaluating and using various robotic systems to assist pickers across our network. Specifically, we’re working with three different approaches, depending on the application:

• Follow me:

  Probably the simplest way to use robots is in a follow-me configuration as the robots do not need to be integrated with the WMS. The picker controls an automated cart with an assist device. This allows the picker to load cartons without having to stop to advance the cart. When fully loaded, the cart travels autonomously back to the pack station. Based on our analysis, this approach creates an approximately 20-percent increase in the productivity of pickers.

• Lead me:

  In a lead-me strategy, the mobile robot is integrated into the WMS and assigned to a picker. The robot then leads the picker from pick location to pick location, displaying the items and quantity to be picked. As with the follow-me approach, the robot travels autonomously back to the pack station, eliminating non-value travel time for the picker. This approach can create productivity increases as high as 50 percent.

• Swarm me:

  The swarm-me strategy, detaches the mobile robots from pickers, who are assigned to a zone. Robots receive orders from the WMS and travel to pick locations, where a nearby picker sees a task on the robot’s screen and picks to the robot’s tote. More than one robot at a time can go into a zone and then travel autonomously to the pack station when an order is complete. This approach, the most sophisticated of the three, also delivers the greatest improvements in productivity—200 percent or better.

Looking to What’s Next

Robotic-assisted picking represents a viable solution for the near term and real opportunity to improve productivity during the 2019 holiday season. But, longer term, other digital technologies are also emerging that will help organizations better manage peak demand and increase productivity.

DHL Supply Chain, through its regional innovation centers and pilot programs at select sites, is constantly evaluating emerging technologies. Two that show particular promise are heads-up displays that use augmented reality and artificial intelligence-enabled predictive analytics.

With more organizations looking to third-party logistics partners for physical/mechanical technology solutions (60 percent according to our survey), DHL Supply Chain is committed to continuing to advance the use of technology across our operations to boost productivity and serve the evolving needs of our customers.

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