• C.H. Robinson has announced what it believes is an industry first, a Lean AI operational model that deploys AI agents using a LEAN working methodology to speed up its provision of air freight and customs brokerage.
• The new price-quoting has technology has determined and delivered, through AI, over 80,000 price quotes for over 3,600 customers.
• So far, time spent by C.H. Robinson’s Customs team has been reduced by 23 percent, allowing the company’s customs brokers to focus on critical validation and compliance steps.

C.H. Robinson has announced that it has launched new AI agents as part of its ‘Lean AI’ operational model. This means that its Lean AI capabilities have now been extended into its freight forwarding operations, and so will benefit a greater proportion of its customer base.

Lean AI in essence means using AI agents to fix only specific slow or wasteful jobs, and checking that each fix actually helps, combining AI with the ‘LEAN’ working methodology. This itself is a way of running a business that focuses on cutting waste, meaning any step, wait, error or extra stock that costs time or money without adding value for the customer.

“As we’ve brought our AI playbook to global forwarding, the benefits keep compounding. Customers have information they need sooner. Data is more consistent. Processes are more predictable. When plans change or disruptions occur, customers can more quickly evaluate a new routing, mode of shipping, schedule or price. Not to mention speed-to-market is a real competitive advantage. The faster we get you a quote and handle your booking, the faster you get the ideal carrier and the ideal sailing or flight. For a vessel on the water 15 to 35 days, you don’t want to wait weeks for the next one. For an air shipment, life-saving medicines, perishable produce and critical automotive parts absolutely must arrive on time. Our Lean AI makes your supply chain a smarter, faster, better one,” said Mike Short, President of Global Forwarding.

C.H. Robinson believe this is an industry first, and will bring precision and agility to supply chains without sacrificing human oversight of processes.

The new price-quoting has technology has determined and delivered, through AI, over 80,000 price quotes for over 3,600 customers. Quotes that used to take a day for an air shipment and two to three days for an ocean shipment are now said to take two to three minutes.

This can extend to filling in missing information, such as when a shipper leaves out a destination or designate a port. An AI agent is capable of answering the discreet task of where can be considered for the freight to arrive.

“We have more work to do automating all the steps for booking, but this is already a major leap forward. Before agentic AI, we’d developed digital booking forms and data exchange setups with customers, but over the course of about 10 years achieved only about 5% automation for ocean and air booking requests. Why was that such a tough hill to climb? Primarily because you quote your customer, then it’s their suppliers booking with you. A customer might have 50 suppliers. With our agentic AI, all those booking requests no longer need to be handled manually,” said Mike Neill, Chief Technology Officer.

The new AI agents and automations that are now assisting C.H. Robinson’s Customs team have been tasked with what had been manual handling of over four dozen types of documents from shippers, carriers and government agencies needed to clear U.S. Customs.

Incoming documents are split up, classified and attached to their individual shipments. An AI agent extracts necessary data, while the system monitors for missing documents and requests them. Automated invoices and information packets are sent out at the end. So far, time spent has been reduced by 23 percent, allowing the company’s customs brokers to focus on critical validation and compliance steps.

“When we built the first of our hundreds of proprietary AI agents in 2023, we were at the beginning of our company’s transformation. We continue making disciplined choices about where we deploy Lean AI. Our AI agents continue to operate on 100 trillion data points and a context layer of customer-specific information that simply cannot be replicated elsewhere. While our 450 in-house software engineers and data scientists are still innovating in our trucking and 4PL businesses, now we’re using those advantages to widen our competitive moat in global forwarding,” said Arun Rajan, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer.

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