Intelligent CIO North America Issue 18 | Page 57

CASE STUDY

Warehouses , ports and airports already feel like ways to make merchandise distribution processes more efficient , safe and dependable globally . Meanwhile , improving the digital channels for purchasing products makes life even easier for buyers .

This could be described as a ‘ discreet revolution ’ because , although the process is evident and has an extremely significant impact on both companies and customers , it has remained in the background and has continued to be low-profile .
However , it is inevitable to recognize that because of the pandemic , digitalization , automation technologies and robotization were massively accelerated . This is something we should be grateful for since without more efficient logistics , the impact of the global crisis would have been even more significant .
Intelligent CIO spoke with Florida-based Nabil Malouli , Global VP of e-commerce , DHL , to share his thoughts on the use of technology in the logistics sector .
How long have you been in the industry ?
I have been in the industry for 14 years and I think we have had the most interesting time in the last 18 months . Logistics is at the center of this Digital Transformation that companies are experiencing due to COVID-19 .
How have logistics companies been both victims and beneficiaries of the pandemic ?
Before the pandemic started in the Americas , we already saw the advancing wave through Europe and we were prepared . We saw that things were more complicated in Asia since January and February last year . But no matter how much one prepared , no one could plan the timing , impact , scale and consequences of the pandemic entirely .
How was the process of digitizing service centers on a global scale ?
We have been speculating on the issue of digitization for several years . We have more than 2,000 projects at the corporate level that include robotics , autonomous vehicles , AI and AR . Different applications and technologies can help us in the logistics world depending on the intention .
What we do is share the information regarding research and development in the corporation ’ s sites . Apart from this , we have three innovation centers where we have the antennas and the brain of innovation in the corporation to improve the ecosystem , share knowledge and facilitate new entrepreneurs , and we include sustainability issues where we do a lot of development .
How do you go about making the most of robotics and automation in the warehouse ?
There are two primary use cases where we see a lot of ROI and interest from the market . One is flexible

DIFFERENT APPLICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGIES CAN HELP US IN THE LOGISTICS

WORLD DEPENDING ON THE INTENTION .

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