The US leader in contract logistics DHL Supply Chain, and a part of Deutsche Post DHL Group, revealed the plan to hire 12,000 seasonal warehouse employees as a preparation for the annual peak season in the holiday shopping period. From those, 9,000 will join the company’s eCommerce and retail sectors. Other companies such as UPS and FedEx will also continue to hire additional workforce for the holiday peak season. However, a recent survey has shown that as a result of this year’s inflation, 84% of shoppers are planning to somehow lower the holiday shopping in 2022.
As stated by DHL Supply Chain’s CEO Scott Sureddin, “We are seeing a return to pre-pandemic growth rates as the pent up demand that fueled the high surges has been tapering off in most product categories. Nonetheless we expect volumes to remain strong”.
DHL Supply Chain currently has a network of 497 sites with over 151 million square feet of warehouse space across North America.
Apart from recruiting new associates, DHL also includes modern technology implementation. Therefore, 2,000 robots (which is up from 1,500 in the peak season in 2021) will operate in this year’s peak season and this will increase the efficiency at the same time. DHL as a result expanded the partnership with Locus Robotics for two warehouses in Ohio.
According to DHL Supply Chain’s CIO Sally Miller, “Last peak season our collaborative robots played a key role in our success; they helped to improve throughput by up to 20%. Additionally, the feedback from our associates has been overwhelmingly positive as they are able to maintain consistent productivity levels throughout the day thanks to the reduction of their walking time by 60%”.
The success from the 2021 peak season is proved with 99.98% successfully processed orders on time during the highest demand period from Black Friday on 26 November to 3 December.
