Shipping and logistics provider DHL Express will invest $185 million in its U.S. operations during 2016 and 2017 in an effort to meet continued business growth and growing e-commerce volume in the country with additional infrastructure, technology, and people, the company said Wednesday.
The initiative will create some 900 new jobs in 2016, and the company has already rolled out new "smart" scanners that equip DHL couriers with voice and GPS capabilities as well as stop-by-stop sequencing and turn-by-turn navigation. DHL will also expand its plans for growth in other countries in the region, with new investments in its operations in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Chile, and Peru.
One sign of that growth is DHL's forecast for a 12-percent volume increase year over year during the 2016 holiday season, triggered in part by a strong U.S. dollar that encourages consumers to shop abroad for holiday gifts and boost demand for import volume. The projection is similar to rival UPS Inc.'s prediction of a 14-percent increase in seasonal global delivery volume over last year's peak.
However, DHL's growth prediction extends beyond seasonal holidays such as Christmas and Mother's Day, as the proportion of global e-commerce volume in its total business has risen above 20 percent, up from about 10 percent in 2013, the company said. In response to those trends, DHL plans to leverage the global B2C e-commerce market for cross-border shipments, which is expected to grow in absolute terms from $400 billion today to a total global volume of $1 trillion in 2020.
The company has already completed a portion of the $108 million investment project at its Americas Hub, located at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport, which was announced last year. Two weeks ago it opened the North Ramp expansion, dedicating 45 acres of land to provide parking space for 16 additional planes each night and adding new storage and warehouse space for ramp equipment and shipping containers. Coming next year will be additional automated sorting capability and 40 new reload positions that will enhance the hub's efficiency to handle the growing e-commerce volume seen in the Americas.
Future spending will include $20 million over two years to upgrade and expand the company's ground fleet, adding more fuel-efficient vehicles, including fully electric vans and electric forklifts, at its JFK airport facility in New York.
DHL will also spend nearly $60 million to deal with growing shipping volumes by expanding and adding facilities and by providing technology and security upgrades and new equipment such as the courier scanners. That effort has already added three new service centers in New York City, Chicago, and Seattle, and includes plans to expand its Los Angeles gateway (completed in 2016), add a new gateway in Chicago, and refurbish its JFK gateway in 2017, adding a new, improved automated sort system that will facilitate earlier morning deliveries in the New York market.
"Going forward, we will continue to keep our focus on the last mile, leveraging technologies and solutions that provide added convenience for customers," Mike Parra, CEO of DHL Express Americas, said in a release. "This approach focuses on convenient pickup and drop-off options, proactive notification, and flexible delivery solutions. We are also reconfiguring delivery routes to handle more afternoon deliveries due to an increasing number of shipments going to residential customers, in part due to increased e-commerce volume."
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.