Global logistics company C.H. Robinson has revolutionized freight shipment management by developing technology that reads incoming emails and automates various tasks that a person would typically perform. This innovation streamlines the entire shipment lifecycle, from providing price quotes to accepting loads, scheduling pickups and deliveries, and monitoring shipments in transit.
The new proprietary technology employs generative artificial intelligence to tackle the long-standing challenge of automating email transactions, which shippers often prefer over other methods. While shippers integrated with C.H. Robinson’s platform have enjoyed automated service for years, email requests previously required human intervention. Now, more than 10,000 routine transactions are automated daily, allowing email users to benefit from the same speed and cost savings as other customers, while C.H. Robinson teams can focus on higher-value tasks.
“In May, we announced that we had begun utilizing our new technology for emailed price requests. Within just a few months, we developed additional models to automate more shipping processes and have already scaled them effectively,” said Arun Rajan, the company’s Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer. “This represents a significant efficiency breakthrough for the industry and global supply chains. Retailers needing a variety of products or automakers relying on just-in-time delivery for thousands of components can greatly benefit from time savings on every shipment.”
C.H. Robinson began by automating price quotes, then expanded the application of generative AI to increasingly complex tasks. This involved integrating the technology with the company’s extensive market knowledge, specialized expertise in diverse supply chains, and understanding of individual customer requirements.
“An emailed load tender might simply state, ‘I have a load for Tuesday,’ because the shipper knows we understand their schedule. Alternatively, it could contain extensive details about multiple loads in a PDF with handwritten notes,” explained Mark Albrecht, Vice President for Artificial Intelligence at C.H. Robinson. “Our technology can link information from different parts of the email, identify missing elements, and take necessary actions. We’ve even developed capabilities to determine optimal shipment methods and palletizing strategies for various commodities. Our extensive dataset and the continuous learning of our generative AI tools give us a competitive edge.”
Prior to this advancement, processing an emailed load tender could take up to four hours. That time has now been reduced to just 90 seconds.
After a person accessed the email, it took an average of seven minutes to manually enter the shipment details into our system for a single load,” Albrecht noted. “If an email contained 20 loads, a person would have to enter the information individually for each one. With generative AI, we can process all 20 loads simultaneously in the same 90 seconds. This is a tremendous time saver, especially considering we have scaled this to thousands of shipment orders per day since June.