DHL delivers certainty in an uncertain world

In a move designed to boost regional infrastructure and support Africa’s burgeoning trade growth, DHL Express, the world’s leading international express services provider, has announced the launch of its sub Saharan African quality control center (QCC) in Johannesburg.
This center is the first in a series of investments planned by DHL Express in Africa over the next twelve months. The multi-million Rand center, which is located at DHL’s Express sub-Saharan headquarters in Johannesburg, links sub Sahara Africa to the world via the four global quality control centers in Bonn, Singapore (servicing Asia Pacific), Leipzig (servicing Europe) and Cincinnati (servicing the Americas).
According to Charles Brewer, managing director of DHL Express sub Saharan Africa, the launch of DHL’s quality control center in Africa will enable “DHL to deliver certainty in an uncertain world, whether that be adverse weather conditions, natural disasters, political unrest or infrastructure breakdown.At the heart of every QCC is a monitoring facility with eyes on the world. Thanks to the center, we are managing shipments proactively on a real time basis from start to finish, taking decisive action when necessary to ensure their fast and secure delivery.”
According to Tanya Elms, vice president service quality of global network operations of DHL Express, the four global quality control centers monitor the movement of more than 1 billion units.
“Globally DHL Express has over 30 000 touch points and in excess of 100,000 staff in a network covering over 220 countries and territories,”says Elms.
“Due to the pace of growth in key emerging markets such as Africa, the need for an additional quality control centre – to monitor both the day-to-day movement of all goods as well as to manage crises as and when they happen – was evident.”
In order to ensure even better service to customers, the focus of the new Quality Control Center is twofold: service recovery. This is to identify a breakdown in the shipment process chain at the earliest possible time to activate agreed contingency plans to maintain quoted service levels, and
pro-active notification in the event of an unavoidable service incident, allow visibility to pre-defined customers of the delay and impact for pro-active customer notification.
These two areas are made possible through real-time checkpoints which exist to allow for real-time responses. As shipments move through the next stage of their journey, DHL captures the information across millions of checkpoints every 15 minutes. This information allows the control center to react immediately should a checkpoint not be activated.