DHL expects 5,000 supply chain professionals will be visiting the new facility every year to discuss ideas and watch demonstrations of technology that has the potential for significant productivity and efficiency gains.
The new DHL Innovation Center in the Chicago area was built for the company’s operations in the Americas and joins two nearly identical facilities in Cologne, Germany, and Singapore for the company’s European and Asian operations, respectively.
The state-of-the-art 28,000 square-foot facility in Rosemont is organized into three areas: a workshop, showroom and networking space. In each, DHL employees can interact and engage with customers, technology partners, academics and other DHL associates to demonstrate and discuss solutions to supply chain challenges.
During a private media tour on Sept. 11, DHL executives shared the process by which the company determines the technologies to showcase in the Innovation Center and deploy for select customers as a proof-of-concept before they are scaled out.
The process starts with DHL creating a report every other year called the Logistics Trend Radar. The report, now in its fourth year, looks at trends that company leaders believe will impact the industry in the next five to 10 years.
The report gives DHL a structured way to understand societal and technology trends in its business environment by ranking them according to their predicted impact and time horizon. Each year, the company picks two or three of the topics and does a separate “deep dive” trend report.
