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Ryder brings together its technology leaders to create a center of excellence for artificial intelligence.
The team will evaluate and prioritize ideas for potential AI use cases. However, leadership wants to ensure that data is secure and that any technology deployments are secure and appropriate.
With approximately 47,500 full-time employees in North America as of December 31, 2023, Ryder can leverage ideas from employees, but it wants to do so in a thoughtful and methodical way.
“All these good ideas that come in — do we prioritize them and then follow them … in the right direction?” Brian Wood, Vice President of Ryder’s Enterprise Technology Services, said in an interview last week. “This is a game-changing situation.”
Wood said that while there are existing frameworks for other technology, such as machine learning, the company wants to make sure it approaches AI in a coordinated way, avoiding unnecessary overlap.
The group will be led by Chief Marketing Officer Karen Jones and Chief Information Officer Rajeev Ravindran. Other team members include the department CIO as well officials in business units such as dedicated, fleet management, supply chain and finance.
The group is expected to begin meeting next month.
Current AI developments
Artificial intelligence isn’t new to Ryder — the company has been using AI for years through predictive software, Wood said. Now genetic artificial intelligence takes it to another dimension.
As an example, Ryder is building a productive AI capability for call center agents to summarize call logs to improve efficiency and customer service, he said. The technology could quickly update a call center representative with all the previously documented information in a brief summary.
“We’re building it in-house, but tying it in with some existing applications within the call center so it’s seamless for the call center agent,” Wood said.
Last year, the supply chain and transportation services provider announced the creation of a Silicon Valley Technology Lab led by the founders of Baton, which was acquired by Ryder in 2022. The startup aims to optimize transportation networks and partially eliminate waste using data to improve programming.
“These technologies will digitize and optimize networks at a level not currently available in the industry and prepare Ryder for the coming wave of artificial intelligence (AI),” the company said in a statement.
“A whole new world of opportunity”
To the company Investor Day in JuneJones described how the technology could drive internal operational efficiencies and help Ryder customers compare maintenance performance across fleets.
He further described the technology’s potential to make a difference, noting on a panel that AI computing power can now accelerate robot training exponentially faster. He also said that humanoids don’t call in sick and can work 24/7.
“It opens up a whole new world of opportunity for us to see,” he said.
He added that RyderVenturesa corporate venture capital fund, allows the company to take a first look to evaluate such technologies and determine future investment and business development to customers.