The ability to manage robot fleets is essential to scaling. DHL Supply Chain today said it has deployed SVT Robotics’ SOFTBOT platform across its global warehouse network.
DHL noted that each automation project previously required custom coding, which took up to six to eight weeks. Enterprise-wide rollouts were slow and costly, said the Bonn, Germany-based third-party logistics provider (3PL).
With the SOFTBOT connectors, DHL said it is continuing to move away from monolithic, all-in-one systems to modular warehouse setups that accommodate multiple automated systems and can be reconfigured as technology and customer needs evolve.
“The logistics industry is characterized by rapid change – whether it’s customer profile, volumes, or newly emerging technology – so our automation solutions need to adapt just as quickly,” stated Sally Miller, global CIO of DHL Supply Chain. “The SOFTBOT Platform gives us an effective and efficient way to connect different types of robotics to our warehouse systems, monitor performance in real time, and scale solutions across sites with confidence.”
DHL needs tech-agnostic layer for resilience
DHL has already used SOFTBOT for more than 8,000 collaborative robots, noted Tim Tetzlaff, global head of digital transformation at DHL Supply Chain.
“We refer to logistics as ‘the operating system of society,’ whether it’s critical medical supplies or keeping the shelves of grocery stores stocked, keeping production lines moving, or delivering spare parts,” he told Automated Warehouse. “Over the past five years, disruptions to that OS have become the norm. We thought during COVID that this changes everything — everybody buys everything online. We changed our warehouse setups.”
“But then that subsided a bit,” added Tetzlaff. “And then we had terrorists, everybody moving their warehouses to not be hit by tariffs, and suddenly, you can’t move products anymore through the Strait of Hormuz. That change is absolutely the norm. Our customers require not only efficiency and affordable warehousing and transport, but also flexible stability.”
To provide that resilience in the face of geopolitical, market, and technological change, DHL Supply Chain relies on its people, locations, and robots, he said. The company has 2,500 operations worldwide and 190,000 employees. However, the 3PL does not have a single standardized solution across all sites, instead looking at its customer requirements and building solutions as needed, explained Tetzlaff.
“We have productized 70 robotic solutions from the likes of Locus Robotics, 6 River Systems, and AutoStore,” he said. “We also have some standardized warehouse management systems [WMS] and strategic partners, so we needed a technology-agnostic integration layer to maximize reuse and speed, minimize technical depth, and, of course, unlock unique data opportunities.”
SOFTBOT helps 3PL scale automation on its own
“We pride ourselves at DHL in saying that innovation is only real [if it’s] scaled,” Tetzlaff said. “We know our customer archetypes and operational profiles so we can choose the right technology for, say, a small to midsize e-commerce business or a larger-scale automotive spare parts provider. SVT is the glue that ties together our IT, robotics and automation, and operations.”
The SOFTBOT plug-and-play platform allows DHL’s product team to deploy automation up to 12 times faster than traditional custom-coding setups, noted Norfolk, Va.-based SVT Robotics. It also provides a single, multi-site dashboard for teams to efficiently monitor system-wide operations.
“The key to the platform is that the standardization isn’t in the integration itself; it’s at the edge,” said Jim Hodson, co-founder and senior vice president of customer operations at SVT. “All those edge technologies can use their blue-chip APIs. They don’t have to customize them to communicate with the other technologies or WMS at a site, so that really does reduce technical debt over time.”
“We had always planned on making SOFTBOT a self-service platform,” he told Automated Warehouse. “Customers like DHL are able to develop and reuse connectors themselves. That evolution has been a combination of working with the DHL team over the past three years and evolving the product to make sure that it was both possible and scalable. You don’t need to be a coder or to have a computer science degree to use our platform in the warehouse.”
SVT said SOFTBOT’s unified data layer also enables visibility, helping DHL better coordinate hybrid fleets of associates and robots working side by side. This supports safer, more efficient workflows without introducing new layers of complexity.
“Our operations worldwide are already seeing clear benefits from deploying robotics and automation via SVT,” observed Tetzlaff. “It has enabled us to replicate goods‑to‑person [G2P] solutions across Europe with integration work completed in just three hours. We’ve also added new operational technology to live operations in Asia-Pacific with zero downtime.”
SVT Robotics accelerates toward a data-rich future
Both partners praised their ongoing collaboration.
“All our key robotics and automation products already have SOFTBOTs deployed or in development. Custom code and integration is a horrible project to do with a new WMS each time, so such middleware is a huge advantage for flexible stability,” said Tetzlaff. “My internal business customers can ask me, ‘Can I have something similar in Singapore?’ and I can say, ‘For that use case, here’s the robot, here’s the integration layer, and here’s the WMS and labor management system we use.’”
“One of the most positive aspects about working with the DHL team is its very honest feedback so we can push the envelope and enable it to move really fast,” Hodson added. “It’s important that SVT’s integration layer be stable, can easily improve uptime, and is easy to troubleshoot and monitor. During the last peak season, we had twice as many sites as the year before with half as many tickets and no major downtime.”
“It’s been exciting to collaborate with DHL on their accelerated digitalization efforts and to support their team in their use of our SOFTBOT Platform,” said AK Schultz, co-founder and CEO of SVT Robotics. “In fact, DHL now does the majority of implementations without hands-on support from SVT. This means they can scale even faster and further reduce costs, accelerate their deployments, and take advantage of the data visibility that our platform uniquely provides.”
SOFTBOT is now live in 30 DHL Supply Chain sites worldwide, with plans to expand to more than 100 sites across all regions over the next three years.
“I can now come into the office in the morning and look at how many miles robots have traveled in the U.K. and have people tell me that we’re seeing lower volume in our operation in Malaysia,” Tetzlaff said. “In the future, I hope to be able to build a warehouse in, say, New Zealand and have a single pane of glass to turn those signals into more actionable improvements.”
“We’re looking into how does one do intelligent, dynamic orchestration of all the assets in a warehouse?” he concluded. “With SVT, we can feed the activity data that we get from the robots, plus data from the labor management system. This is a tangible use case that has value today.”