From 18th-century steam engines to 21st-century robotic warehouses and driverless trucks, logistics have been increasingly automated. The trend is even stronger now that the growth of e-commerce propels the industry into an AI-driven future. “It is difficult to imagine a successful logistics business in the future without the use of AI-related capabilities,” said Co-Leader of Business Transformation Services at Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), Serving Logistics Clients, M.D. He says Manish Saigal. Saigal said the use of AI, ML, data and blockchain will be the biggest opportunities in the logistics sector over the next few years. And India “could be a $10 billion market.”
The engine of industry transformation is e-commerce. The dramatic increase in shipments from remote areas of the country is forcing logistics companies to rethink, re-envision and re-strategy. And many are finding their moat in automation.
Consider the ship rocket as an example. Its own logistics unicorn, which enables e-commerce merchants, built an AI-driven Courier Recommendation Engine (CORE) to inform its sales partners on how they can deliver their goods at the lowest price via the best/fastest shipping method. Suggest. We deliver through the best shipping partners. “CORE can detect signals across geographies, PINs, courier partners and customers, and advise sellers on how to assign couriers based on that intelligence,” said Shiprocket’s senior product management vice president of his His president, Praful Poddar, said: If a seller has a delivery success rate of 70%, CORE can help him improve that rate to 75-80%.
The company helps leading D2C brands reduce costs and improve after-sales service, and in the process captures millions of data points from multiple transactions across shopping platforms, which it feeds into its AI system. to increase its accuracy and usefulness over time. . Shiprocket, which handles 10 million shipments per month, says its cost per order across 45 warehouses has halved and delivery times have been cut by 40-50% since it started using his AI analytics for order processing. I’m here.
More importantly, it helps predict demand, so “products can be stored closer to customers and shipping costs can be reduced,” Poder says. A&M’s Saigal adds: “E-commerce logistics are so dynamic on the demand side that you never know where the next order will come from. Companies are now relying on AI/ML-driven logistics models and We are building a fulfillment model.”
Many logistics companies now use predictive analytics for demand forecasting, route and location mapping, inventory planning, warehouse management, improving vehicle utilization and faster shipments. “AI can take into account historical data as well as macro trends that are used to plan efficient shipment fulfillment,” he explains Saigal. “The brand itself also uses AI/ML to optimize sales, plan products and inventory, reduce customer acquisition costs, and maximize profits.”
Some traditional logistics companies, which previously carved out a corner of warehouses designed for B2B operations to fulfill e-commerce orders, are now looking to automation as a way to expand the B2B2C segment. . India may be far from fully robotized warehouses, self-driving aisle carts and driverless trucks, but some basic, repetitive and inefficient jobs are already being automated.
While the benefits of AI interventions are certainly undeniable, the question arises: Are AI interventions threatening jobs in this sector? Will the man-versus-machine era come again? “In the near future, that is unlikely,” said Vaishnav Shetty, chief digital officer at AllCargo Logistics. “We work with several companies whose headcount has been significantly reduced (80 percent or more in some cases) as a result of robotics and automation. It’s still going to take a while at the facility,” he says. Saigal agrees. “The scale and volume of today’s shipments are so high that they are impossible to handle manually, so some of the most basic tasks will be automated. and the right combination of machines to deliver real value at the right cost.”
Automation therefore increases the size of the pie and improves the quality of human intervention. We are creating new “value-added roles” that can be linked with machines. Not only do businesses get more done in less time, they also earn more money per hour and pay their employees better.
Sounds like a logistics utopia.
@mittemaniac
