The addHelix platform designed and developed by Axians in Austria uses AI algorithms to make logistics services more flexible and more agile.
The near-instantaneous movement of data in an environment shaped by digital networks is contributing to the acceleration of both tangible and intangible exchanges. This new real-time temporality particularly affects the transportation of goods.
New standards and ever-shorter deadlines are taking hold, and logistics services are on the front line. Faced with increasingly rapid changes, professionals need to adapt constantly. “The main challenge for logistics service companies today is flexibility,” says Andreas Schellmann, CEO of Ibase and Business Unit Manager at Axians ICT Austria.
This VINCI Energies brand specialising in ICT services and solutions has been working on these logistics issues for more than 20 years.
It has drawn on this experience to design a platform, addHelix, which offers logistics managers the flexibility they need. Based on artificial intelligence, this tool integrates diverse data to create high-performance algorithms. These make it possible to monitor all those engaged in the management and transport of goods.
“AddHelix ensures flexibility for the logistics manager, who can constantly adapt, and operates by itself in a flexible mode.”
In real time, addHelix creates solutions that allow decisions to be made in different registers, such as route selection using geocoded departure and arrival locations, also taking account of the traffic conditions, regional weather forecasts and statistics, and toll charges on the various potential routes.
Forecast data
The platform can forecast the number of deliveries expected the next day, or even the next week or in a month. It generates other forecast data that can help to improve planning, better manage transport volumes, more exactly predict the workforce required for an operation, and improve stock management in depots.
“AddHelix ensures flexibility for the logistics manager, who can constantly adapt, and operates by itself in a flexible mode,” says Andreas Schellmann, “because it’s designed not as a single, centralised program to be plugged into the company’s information system, but as a suite of additional microservices designed specifically for routing and logistics scenarios.”
The “Google of logistics”
AddHelix does not bog the customer down with software to install, says the Axians manager. In this “Google of logistics”, he explains, all the mechanics are handled behind the scenes, outsourced using the Cloud and operating through microservices.
These building blocks, each containing a function, are autonomous and interconnected in the network via programming interfaces (API). They can be “upgraded” or “downgraded” on demand without disrupting the process as a whole.
Directed by artificial intelligence, addHelix microservices ensure flexibility in logistics management and contribute to the versatility of information systems in companies that use them in a simple way.
Access to the logistics gateway is simply handled via a web service, with users connecting through their usual working tool. Andreas Schellmann emphasises that this digital transformation approach makes it possible to forget the “machinery” and focus instead on function and performance.
17/05/2021
