DHL Express is following sister company DHL Supply Chain in deploying the latest version of 'Smart Glasses' technology at its facilities.
The second-generation Glass Enterprise Edition device 'virtually' supports the vision picking process in warehouses.
One part of the digitalization strategy at DHL, along with 'Wearables,' Smart Glasses have been “very successfully piloted at DHL Supply Chain in early 2015,” the Deutsche Post DHL (DP DHL) Group underlined.
“Following test runs in the USA, Europe and the UK, DP DHL's contract logistics arm has rolled out this technology step by step over the past few years and is now using vision picking, a picking process supported with augmented reality, in most geographical regions,” the company explained.
“A success that also convinced DHL Express. The experts for international express delivery are using smart glasses at its freight hubs in Brussels, Belgium, and at Los Angeles Airport, USA. Further deployments are planned at the US airports of New York, Cincinnati and Chicago,” it added.
Markus Voss, COO and CIO of DHL Supply Chain, highlighted that with the second generation of Glass Enterprise Edition, customers and employees can now benefit from even more powerful, technically optimized smart glasses.
“The possibility of object recognition is also particularly promising for us in industrial applications. With the corresponding software, it is no longer just possible to read out barcodes, locate products and display the corresponding storage compartment; in future, also complex objects can be identified with the smart glasses. We expect this to lead to further productivity increases from which our employees and our customers will benefit equally," he said.
Improvements to the latest generation of smart glasses include longer battery life, a processor that is twice as fast, and shorter charging times. According to the manufacturer, the devices are also much more robust. Improvements take the industrial use in intralogistics into account.
Voss noted that these glasses and other wearables, such as ring scanners and Smart Watches, are already being used commercially in many of DHL Supply Chain's warehouses and are only one part of a company-wide digitalization strategy that includes the use of robots, drones, autonomous vehicles and many other technologies.
“I am particularly pleased with the positive feedback from the colleagues who work with these wearables on a daily basis. The operation is so intuitive, their hands are free to "pick" and the visual support helps to locate the products really fast and sort them into the intended trolley boxes. Our colleagues are perfectly equipped to carry out picking quickly," he added.
