DHL Supply Chain and Locus Robotics have announced that they have expanded their partnership to include 10 new, nationwide deployments of the Locus AMR solution in 2020 and 1,000 additional LocusBots. The companies have signed an Expanded Multi-Site Services Agreement outlining these terms.
“DHL Supply Chain’s initial implementation of the Locus solution within the life sciences and retail sectors was a tremendous success; we saw increases in fulfilment productivity of up to 80% in selected customer operations. We now see an opportunity to extend the benefits of utilising their highly flexible AMR solution at scale for customers across multiple sectors,” said Jim Gehr, President, Retail at DHL Supply Chain North America.
DHL Supply Chain North America and Locus Robotics partnered in 2017 to pilot a collaborative, autonomous robotics solution – LocusBots – to support associates in piece picking order fulfilment in warehouses. The LocusBots navigate autonomously within warehouses to quickly locate and transport pick items to associates. They can be flexibly deployed to support a diverse range of picking strategies, significantly reducing time spent on routine or physically demanding tasks, reducing manual errors and increasing productivity.
In 2018, DHL Supply Chain announced a multi-year plan to invest $300m in emerging technologies in its North American operations. The company has rolled out an accelerated digitalisation programme that has identified 14 target technologies – seven of which involve collaborative robotics – that can be fast-tracked into customers’ operations.
Source: DHL
