“The DHL Logistics Trend Radar is used like the North Star tonavigate the future by our customers, partners, and colleagues andhas now been in existence for nearly 10 years,” adds KlausDohrmann, VP Head of Innovation Europe, DHL Customer Solutions &Innovation. “In this year’s edition, we introduced new trends thatbecame more relevant to the logistics industry like ComputerVision, Interactive AI, Smart Labels and DEIB (Diversity, Equity,Inclusion & Belonging), while the many other trends are furtherclarified from the previous edition to offer more detail. Forexample, the fifth-edition trend Sustainable Logistics – which wasthe hottest topic of last year – is further split into circularity,decarbonization, alternative energy solutions, and other trends.Sustainability is definitely still a top-of-mind topic for ourcustomers today but ensuring resilience in the supply chain istaking center stage in the transformation of logistics. The supplychain status quo narrative of efficiency and operational excellenceis now being complemented by an understanding that the supply chainis an essential driver of tangible value creation.”
Supply chain diversification leads to resilience with visibilityplaying a key role
As climate-relateddisasters and geopolitical interferences become more prevalent,organizations look into diversifying their supply chains in aneffort to make their operations more resilient. Multisourcing, thepartnering with multiple competing suppliers, and multishoring, theselecting providers in more or different countries or regions, aresome of the strategies that organizations can take. Broadening thesupplier ecosystem and expanding manufacturing and distributionnetworks can achieve increasing resilience, agility,responsiveness, and competitiveness. 76% of businesses surveyed areplanning to make significant changes to their supplier base withinthe next two years to ensure supply chain resilience. The key tobuilding resilient supply chains is having visibility. In thiscase, big data helps to analyze large quantities of data to revealpast patterns, highlight real-time changes in the status quo, andcreate predictions and forecasts for the future. Thoseorganizations at the forefront and seeing the greatest gains intheir supply chains are those capable of analyzing vast quantitiesof quickly accruing, unstructured data, while those who only lookat core transactional data are missing out on visibilityopportunities. Digital twins, another emerging trend to help withbusiness visbility, can reinforce predictive maintenance proceduresin operations, reducing industrial breakdowns by 70% and keepingsupply chains running. Computer vision – another example – enablesmore efficient processes and more secure operations.
Environmental sustainability at the top of everyone’s agenda
The topic of environmentalsustainability continues to gain relevance in the world, and thisyear’s report further delves into specific sustainability trends,expanding into systems and processes and not just technologies. Thenew trends that have emerged carrying a significant impact aredecarbonization, alternative energy solutions, circularity, andenvironmental stewardship. In the trend of decarbonization, theWorld Economic Forum recently found that a net-zero supply chainwill, on average, increase prices by no more than 4%. With manycustomers now willing to pay extra for more sustainable options,companies are investigating the various existing decarbonizationsolutions for their supply chains. 85% of consumers have become‘greener’ in their purchase behavior in the last five years, and65% are making modest to total lifestyle changes, pushing companiesto inspect ways to make their products greener, often focusing ontheir supply chains. Regarding alternative energy solutions,companies should investigate in planning an electric fleet. Of the$755 billion invested in the energy transition in 2021, 36% wasinvested in electric transport. One trend that has the potential tochange business models is circularity. Currently, only 8.5 per centof society’s total material consumption is recycled or reused.Logistics organizations face major opportunities in all supplychain segments to improve their sustainability effort withcircularity principles, and thus respond to the needs of theircustomers.
Automation and efficiency brings forth the biggest opportunityfor increased productivity
In order to keep up withgrowing consumer demand, companies will need to start looking intoautomation and efficiency technologies to help with productivity.Important trends to mention here are indoor mobile robots andstationary robots, further extending a hand to staff on the ground.Indoor mobile robots have greatly diversified over the years withcontinual technological advancements. These indoor mobile robotscan now move goods from one point to the other, help with loadingand unloading containers or trucks and even assist in facilitysupport with cleaning and security. Stationary robots on the otherhands can be placed strategically in warehouses or hubs to optimizeprocesses. In the future, it will be impossible to imaginelogistics without automated processes using collaborativerobots.
DHL has four Innovation Centers in Germany, Singapore, the USA,and the United Arab Emirates, pioneering the future of logisticsand driving customer-centric innovation around the world. Thesecreative hubs host workshops, innovation center tours, events, andcollaborative innovation projects to better understand customerneeds and identify actions to solve key supply chain challenges.DHL takes a focused, user-centric, and systematic thoughtleadership approach to identify upcoming developments, new bestpractices, potential industry applications and the impact of thesetrends on logistics.