Benefits and limitations of the technology

The pilot's objective was to gain insights on the technology's benefits and limitations. For three weeks, warehouse staff in Bergen op Zoom was equipped with head mounted displays such as Google Glass and VuzixM100. The displays showed the respective task information during the picking process, including aisle, product location and quantity. Overall, 10 order pickers used the equipment and picked more than 20,000 items, fulfilling 9,000 orders within the given time frame. As a result, staff was able to operate much faster and error free. Currently DHL and Ricoh are jointly evaluating the roll-out of the solution.

"We are always looking to further improve our processes with new technologies and we were happy to have DHL as our innovation partner for the pilot project", says Pieter-Jelle van Dijk, Director Operations, Ricoh EMEA.

In June 2014, DHL's Trend Research team issued a trend report called "Augmented Reality in ", which describes best practices and promising use cases. In addition to vision picking in warehousing operations, the report also illustrates how operations during transportation, last mile delivery and value-added services could be improved by augmented reality applications. For the near future, DHL is looking forward to explore the economic feasibility of augmented reality in additional areas and is open for collaboration with further partners.

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