‘The First Day Is the Worst Day’: DHL’s Gina Chung on How AI Improves Over Time

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:01)
Of course, managers can change processes to use AI. But how does adopting AI change organizations?

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:07)
AI is a force of change, but change is not easy, and it's got to be a learning process.

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:14)
In this episode, Gina Chung and DHL relates how adopting AI can shift a corporate culture to embrace innovation. Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast on artificial intelligence and business. Each week, we introduce you to someone innovating with AI.
I'm Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Information Systems at Boston College, and I'm also the guest editor for the AI and Business Strategy, Big Idea Program at MIT Sloan Management Review.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:40)
I'm Shervin Khodabandeh, senior partner with BCG, and I co-lead BCG's AI practice in North America. Together, BCG and MIT SMR have been researching AI for four years, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and surveying thousands of companies on what it takes to build and deploy and scale AI capabilities and really transform the way organizations operate.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:07)
So in the last couple of episodes, we've talked with Walmart, we've talked with Humana. I'm pretty excited. Today, we're talking with Gina Chung from DHL.
Hi, Gina. Welcome to the show. Can you take a minute and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your role?

**Gina Chung** (1:22)
Hi, I'm Gina Chung. I hit up innovation for DHL in the Americas region, and as part of this role, I also operate our Innovation Center out here in Chicago.
That's focused on helping supply chain leaders leverage technologies like AI, robotics, wearables in our global operations.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:39)
So how did you get there? How did you end up in that position?

**Gina Chung** (1:43)
I might actually answer this by starting back in college. So I started college wanting to be an investment banker and very quickly figured out that's not for me. But I took a supply chain course and ended up becoming fascinated by how things get manufactured and how things get distributed. I think it's something to do with the fact that I'm from New Zealand and grew up in a pretty isolated part of the world. But anyway, after college, I joined DHL at the headquarters in Germany. I've helped launch eight years ago some of our very first projects working with startups in our operations.
A few years ago, they then asked me to have the pleasure of launching our third innovation center that serves the Americas region out here in Chicago.

**Sam Ransbotham** (2:25)
Actually, I think we can end right there. I love it when someone gets converted from investment banker to supply chain and operations. I think that's great.
Can you give us an example of a project that your team has applied, a technology like AI to?

**Gina Chung** (2:40)
Yes. One project that we've completed using AI and computer vision is to use it to automate the inspection of pallets in our world.
Currently today, our operators have to see whether you can stack one pallet on top of another. That might seem very trivial, but actually it's sometimes very difficult to identify whether that bottom pallet is going to be damaged. You have to look for certain markers, certain indications. Through combining a camera vision system with AI software, we're able to automate that process and reduce potential damages as well as also optimize utilization in our aircraft.

**Sam Ransbotham** (3:19)
So who uses this system?

**Gina Chung** (3:21)
It's our operations. So people on the shop floor that are helping to load our aircraft, the pallets pass through our system. It flags if the pallet can't be stacked, and then our operators are able to see that and then take that pallet out and give it the right marker to say that it can't be stacked, and then there are some other steps in that process to deal with a pallet that can't be stacked. Before, somebody would have to be trained on how to identify whether a pallet can be stacked or not. So they'd have to be trained on look out for these kinds of markers, these kinds of indentations, and then each pallet as it comes through, you'd have to kind of walk around it and make a note and type it into the system.
And now we can actually automate that process using AI and computer vision.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (4:04)
This is a great example of how AI is taking unnecessary human role away, probably even increasing the accuracy and precision, I would assume, of even picking things that human might have missed. Can you comment on how the process that you guys go through to make that AI engine intelligent?