DHL Supply Chain CEO Oscar de Bok on CRYOPDP Acquisition, AI & the Future of Healthcare Logistics

Yeah, happy to. So Oscar De bok, I'm CEO of DHL Supply Chain and part of the board of DHL Group, but also very importantly I'm within the board driving our health logistics product and brand and our overall growth in the healthcare sector.

Yeah, I'll pick some points and then maybe you can add if I missed some.

Yes. Right. So the investments that we're making as DHL, 2 billion in the coming period, to make sure that we have the infrastructure for both the healthcare sector of today

But also the healthcare sector of tomorrow is crucial, and that indeed comes back to really having end-to-end change on multi-temperature that are certified and under control both on land, air, ocean. But specifically the air connections, airport-based terminals, and the other point which is important is the acquisition on Cryo PDP that we've done, because that's exactly one of the feedbacks that we got from customers that they really like us to have things under control in hand towards those end-to-end complicated supply chains. And obviously when you talk about cell and gene therapy or clinical trials, which is where Cryo PDP in multi-temperature is specialized in, that is obviously one of the important elements of the healthcare sector of tomorrow.

Yeah, what we, yeah, exactly. Because one of the things that is really important is that the healthcare sector is a sector in transition, right? And therefore for us it's really important, so we have this customer advisory board where we sit down with our healthcare customers and where we actually discuss about what they need, what their needs are, and on that basis we set our investment strategy.

And you can see I've been doing that now for two and a half years, and where you can really see is some of the investments that we're making now are actually coming out of those type of discussions with the customers which you'd had a couple of years ago.

Oh, you mean, so that was about AI, right?

So, what I gave as examples there is that when we talk about data and AI and generative AI, there's several levels. And you have, if you look at the supply chain sector as a whole and specifically companies like us, we obviously sit on a lot of information and a lot of data.

And what I advised the audience is that make sure to use aggregate data to take decisions, not only the data of the one company, and we can actually help with that perspective. Then we spoke about AI, generative AI specifically, and also the whole robotic solution on the basis of that.

And I gave some examples on how in processes. So for instance, this was a very simple example about the appointments on the delivery point of delivery that we are now running successful pilots with to have that robotized. And the benefit of that is not so much the people that you replace by making those calls, but it's the fact that suddenly within one hour you can make all the appointments that otherwise would have taken the whole week. That means that you can actually optimize your process way faster because of that. And that's a far bigger impact than the actual impact of having a robot doing the calls.

Okay, great. Okay.

I think one is to be agile, but I think that's an obvious one, right? Is to be able to, but also to be able to prioritize and stay focused, to be able to read data. But there's so much in data, you can easily get lost, right? To make sure that you stay focused on what is really important and have that data to be able to then take the fast decisions when they come when they're needed. Do scenario planning of course, because you need to be prepared for the unexpected. And the point that I often make: if you take the past five years, every six months there was something unexpected, and I've been saying that over the past five years, and I also didn't know what was going to come, and every time there's something new, and we're in the middle of something now as well, right? And it always comes down to supply chains, right? It always comes down to how you then have to optimize, change, react, respond, have safety nets in your supply chain, which I think is the exciting part, right? But obviously you need to look at this. So your question was from a leadership perspective: use data, stay focused, be agile, and stay positive.

To the next generation? Well, one, it's super exciting.

We've never had so much data, robotics, fast innovation. And when you innovate, innovate at scale. Don't get lost in some little thingy which is very interesting. Innovate at scale because supply chain is all about scale. And if you can actually innovate at larger scale, you make a difference.

Yeah, absolutely. Because as I said, we have this customer advisory board that obviously is independent of Logif, but it shows that the interaction with our healthcare and our pharma customers is really important, just as the interaction between our pharma customers is very important, because that drives innovation, that drives open thinking. Plus, to take the right decision, we need to also use each other's experience, right? Specifically in a sector in transition as the healthcare sector.

Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you very much.