Transformative Technology
XPO empowers its employees to deliver world-class service through technology. We place massive importance on innovation because we believe that great technology in the hands of well-trained employees, propelled by scale, is the ultimate competitive moat in our industry. Our technology is purpose-built to continuously improve customer service, control costs and leverage our scale. This is a major reason why customers trust us with 160,000 ground shipments and more than 7 billion inventory units each day.
We spend more than $450 million a year on technology. We’ve built a highly scalable, cloud-based platform to speed innovation companywide, with a global team of over 1,700 technology professionals, including more than 100 data scientists. Our efforts are concentrated in four areas: automation and intelligent machines, dynamic data science, the digital freight marketplace, and visibility and customer service, specifically in thee-commerce supply chain.
The significant investments we’re making in technology are funding exciting developments. In October, we announced plans to deploy 5,000 additional robots throughout our logistics sites in North America and Europe. These are intelligent robots that collaborate with humans, designed to supplement our existing workforce and support future growth. Earlier this year, we launched a proprietary, cloud-based warehouse management platform that integrates robotics and other advanced automation very rapidly into our operations. It’s much more efficient than traditional warehouse management systems, particularly in multi-site and multi-channel environments. We’ve been able to accelerateramp-up time on new projects for our customers.
In June, we announced a groundbreaking partnership with Nestlé, the world’s largest food and drink company, toco-create a638,000-square-foot distribution center in the UK for Nestlé’s consumer packaged goods. We’re investing $77 million in this site, which is scheduled to open in 2020 and will feature advanced sorting systems and robotics alongsidestate-of-the-art automation, with a digital ecosystem that integrates predictive data and intelligent machines. It will house an XPO technology laboratory and operate as both a think tank and a launch pad for our innovations.
More broadly, in logistics, our warehouses are becoming high-tech hubs with collaborative robots, drones for inventory management and sophisticated analytics for demand forecasting. Our algorithms can predict the flow of goods and future returns, helping oure-commerce customers plan for peak inventory, capacity and labor levels. We recently started using dynamic analytics in our warehouses to optimize workforce productivity day by day and shift by shift. Our proprietary technology facilitates omnichannel distribution, lean manufacturing support, aftermarket support, supply chain optimization and transportation management.
In transportation, our XPO Connect digital freight marketplace is a landmark introduction. XPO Connect is a fully automated, self-learning and dynamic marketplace that connects shippers and carriers directly, as well as through XPO. It gives our customers direct access to our transportation network and the predictive data that powers it. The platform is designed to provide shippers with a single point of entry for visibility across multiple transportation modes in real time — they can see fluctuations in capacity, look at the spot rates by geography and post loads. Then they can also assign loads and track freight movements through one, secure login.
Carrier signups for XPO Connect went from zero to 6,000 in the first three months after the April launch. Now, six months in, we have more than 13,000 carriers on XPO Connect, and we expect the count to keep climbing fast. These are quality operators in our core network who are
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