WP: How to achieve 400 UPH with Locus Fast Pick
The most important moments in fulfillment rarely announce themselves.
There are no countdown clocks on the warehouse floor. No audience gathered to witness history. Yet inside a DHL Supply Chain operation, a Locus Robotics autonomous mobile robot (AMR) recently completed the one billionth pick, which is a milestone that says less about a single task and more about the quiet consistency that modern supply chains now demand.
For operations leaders and supply chain executives, milestones like this are less about celebration and more about sustained warehouse performance.
For today’s consumers responding to viral trends or otherwise, reliability has become the baseline expectation. Orders are placed in seconds, delivery windows are tracked in real time, and delays are remembered long after the box is opened. What shoppers rarely consider is the warehouse orchestration required behind the scenes to meet those expectations again and again.
Milestones like this one matter because they reveal what dependable operations truly look like: not dramatic bursts of performance, but systems engineered to deliver steadily under changing conditions.
Warehouse Scale You Don’t Hear About
Warehouse fulfillment excellence is rarely visible from the outside. It just exists and shows up as orders processed without friction and promises kept without delay.
Since first partnering with Locus Robotics in 2017, DHL Supply Chain has expanded its use of AMRs across its global network. Today, thousands of AMRs operate across more than 40 DHL-managed sites worldwide, supporting daily fulfillment activity at scale rather than in isolated pilots. Over time, that steady approach has translated into measurable operational gains, including 30–180% increases in units picked per hour and an 80% reduction in training time.
Coordinated through the LocusONE warehouse execution platform, this distributed AMR fleet operates as a unified system rather than a collection of isolated deployments.
These improvements reflect more than efficiency. They signal an operational strategy designed to perform consistently even as order profiles shift, volumes fluctuate, and customer expectations continue to rise.
Reaching one billion picks is not the result of a single peak season or network surge. It is the outcome of thousands of ordinary days when technology performed exactly as intended.
From Early Signal to Embedded Strategy
Long before automation became a widespread priority, leading operators were already testing how robotics could support scalable growth.
When the global Locus Robotics customer network surpassed 100 million picks in 2020 — with the milestone pick completed at a DHL Supply Chain facility — it offered an early glimpse into what flexible robotics could enable inside complex fulfillment environments.
That moment signaled acceleration. One billion picks at DHL itself confirms that scale is rarely the result of a single decision. More often, it reflects a deliberate strategy executed over time.
DHL Supply Chain reinforced that strategy through an expanded global partnership with Locus Robotics that includes plans to deploy 5,000 autonomous mobile robots across its network — a move designed to optimize operations while improving productivity, speed, accuracy, and efficiency.
As DHL Supply Chain CEO Oscar de Bok noted at the time, “An idea is only a good idea if it can scale.”
Reaching one billion picks suggests exactly that: automation is not a temporary advantage, but infrastructure that supports long-term operational performance.
This is the foundation of flexibility-first automation — infrastructure designed to scale, replicate across sites, and adapt as fulfillment models evolve.
Consistency Is the New Differentiator
For many years, speed defined fulfillment leadership, but today, consistency is taking its place.
Demand patterns no longer follow predictable cycles, and planning windows continue to compress. Viral product moments, promotional spikes, and shifting consumer behavior require operations that can respond without hesitation.
In this environment, the ability to execute repeatedly — regardless of external volatility — becomes a defining capability.
Milestones like the billionth pick at DHL are built during routine shifts, not extraordinary ones. They are created each time human teams and robotics systems operate in sync, each time training ramps quickly ahead of demand, and each time throughput holds steady when pressure increases.
This is where operational confidence begins — in the knowledge that your infrastructure is prepared not just for expected volume, but for whatever tomorrow introduces.
The Partnership Behind the Number
Numbers at this scale rarely reflect technology alone. They point to alignment in shared goals, continuous learning, and a willingness to evolve operational strategies over time.
The expanded deployment supports DHL Supply Chain’s efforts to digitally transform operations through a workforce empowered with the right technology to meet rising order volumes, labor constraints, and growing customer expectations.
Supporting diverse workflows across e-commerce fulfillment, retail replenishment, and healthcare logistics, the deployment reflects a broader automation ecosystem that extends beyond picking alone.
The result is a fulfillment environment built not only for performance, but for resilience.
And resilience is increasingly what separates organizations that react from those that lead.
What the One Billionth Pick Really Represents
While most consumers will never know when that billionth pick occurred, DHL does. The milestone item was a pink beanie — a small but telling detail that reflects the level of operational visibility now possible across global fulfillment networks. That kind of real-time insight, once unimaginable at scale, underscores how deeply embedded digital orchestration has become within modern warehouses.
What consumers will notice is far simpler: an order that arrives when expected.
That is the quiet power of modern fulfillment. When operations function as intended, the complexity disappears, leaving only the experience.
As supply chains continue to evolve, success will be defined less by isolated breakthroughs and more by the ability to deliver reliably at scale. The future of fulfillment may be increasingly automated, but its impact will remain largely invisible and measured in everyday moments when execution meets expectation.
The billionth pick is not simply a reflection of progress. It is a signal of where fulfillment is heading.
One billion picks is more than a milestone. It reflects what becomes possible when fulfillment operations are engineered for consistency at scale. Learn how Locus Robotics supports organizations building the operational confidence required for whatever comes next.
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