As the global leader in Lean AI supply chains, C.H. Robinson has built the first AI technology designed to both operate a shipper’s global supply chain and also continuously assess and improve its performance. Now serving the company’s 4PL Managed Solutions customers, a new Lean AI Engineer works in concert with the Lean AI Planner introduced last year to create one connected system that uniquely enhances a supply chain as it runs.
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The Lean AI Engineer can assess an entire supply chain in 25 to 30 minutes and determine improvements before performance is impacted – compared to supply chain assessments that typically take up to four weeks and look backward at what has happened instead of what should happen. While the Lean AI Engineer delivers intel, the Lean AI Planner manages shipments through hundreds of interconnected AI agents and in turn feeds more data back to the Lean AI Engineer to develop even smarter refinements.
“The breakthrough here is that it’s one closed-loop AI system,” said Jordan Kass, President of Managed Solutions. “It will run continuously, improve the operation it’s running and heal itself when something breaks — without an alert or a human noticing a problem first. The Lean AI Planner executes in real time while the Lean AI Engineer studies the results, identifies patterns, adapts logic and influences future decisions. Just like we launched Managed Solutions to break down the barriers between TMS, 3PL and 4PL services, this technology ends the need for separate supply chain intelligence and orchestration tools. It’s what businesses with complex logistics have wanted for decades.”
The technology is autonomously handling 92% of 4PL shipments globally across trucking, ocean, air and rail, from the moment an order is created through tendering, routing, delivery, exceptions and carrier payment.
“This level of premium logistics service has traditionally depended on talented people to manage complexity, make smart decisions day to day and intervene during disruption,” said Kass. “The problem was that talent didn’t scale. We’ve changed that by encoding expertise in the technology itself. Shippers will get infinite talent and expertise, consistently applied across every shipment, regardless of who’s available in what time zone or how much their shipping volume grows or spikes. Their team and our team can focus on strategic priorities and driving the best business results.”
As with all AI, success depends on the data and context the system has access to. With 450 in-house software engineers and data scientists, the proprietary context layer of C.H. Robinson’s AI was built by methodically capturing institutional knowledge from workflows and the company’s seasoned freight experts and feeding it to the model on an ongoing basis.
“Our technology truly understands your supply chain from the inside out, because the AI leverages all the data on all the steps of your shipping end to end, not just the parts of your supply chain that disparate tools see,” said Kass. “It also has the benefit of being trained on the unique context we have from orchestrating your freight – the large and small details about your goods, your procedures, each pickup and delivery location, your carriers, your routing and risk tolerance. That’s how the Lean AI Engineer knows which improvements are right for you, instead of making generic or theoretical recommendations. If you’re an auto-parts maker shipping cross-border to a just-in-time assembly line five days a week, it won’t suggest how much you could save by shipping once a week.”
C.H. Robinson’s advanced AI takes into account more variables than human analysis or typical software analysis could, and recommendations are more actionable as well as prioritized. At launch, the Lean AI Engineer identifies optimizations and hidden savings. One early adopter learned that switching from a varied shipping schedule to once a week would reduce their loads by 17% across 20 locations for an annual savings of over $1 million. For another, reorganizing their shipments so that one pickup serves three different delivery locations would cut their loads by 81% and save them 40%.
In the coming weeks, the Lean AI Engineer will roll out for more customers and begin assessing a multitude of other factors, such as carrier performance. Continuously monitoring carrier behavior across lanes, transportation modes and customers, it will identify leading indicators of degrading performance and recommend corrective actions before service failures happen.
“Supply chains do not generally suffer from a lack of information. They suffer from the gap between knowing and doing,” said Arun Rajan, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer. “Tech that sits above or outside of a supply chain can aggregate data, harmonize signals and recommend. But it relies on someone else to execute on the signals and someone else to learn whether those actions worked. Our tech closes the gap, delivering 24/7 premium service with one unified system no one else can match.”
ABOUT C.H. ROBINSON
C.H. Robinson is the global leader in Lean AI supply chains. For more than a century, companies everywhere have looked to us to reimagine how goods move. Now, as we redefine what’s next for the industry, that same drive fuels our commitment to Building Tomorrow’s Supply Chains, Today™. Trusted by 75,000 customers and 450,000 carriers, we manage an unmatched 37 million shipments annually, representing $23 billion in freight. We deliver tailored solutions across the world via truckload, less-than-truckload, ocean, air and more. With our unique combination of human insight and Lean AI working as one, supply chains move faster, smarter and more sustainably. As a responsible global citizen, we proudly contribute millions to the causes that matter most to our employees. Find out more at chrobinson.com. (Nasdaq: CHRW)
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