Jabil Expands Digital Commerce Capabilities at Center of Manufacturing Excellence in Chihuahua, Mexico
Jabil’s Retail Industry Leadership Reinforced by Expanded Manufacturing in North America, Ongoing Investment in Digitalization, and Continuous Collaboration with Retail Technology Disruptors
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Jabil Inc. (NYSE: JBL) announced enhanced digital commerce capabilities, encompassing the design, development, and manufacturing of retail and warehouse automation solutions, at a newly expanded center of excellence in Chihuahua, Mexico. The recent addition of this third plant in Chihuahua, the fifth in the region, offers customers access to over one-million square-feet of regional production capacity. In addition to elevating Jabil’s operational efficiency and flexibility, customers can benefit from increased nearshoring opportunities and greater access to robotics and process automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and additive manufacturing.
“Over the past two decades, Jabil has been at the forefront of the retail industry, working alongside valued customers to drive the development and delivery of the most advanced digital commerce solutions — from warehouse automation to in-store digitalization, including electronic shelf labels, autonomous robots, point-of-sale systems, contactless and embedded payment solutions, intelligent vending machines, self-checkout systems, and more,” said Rafael Renno, SVP, Global Business Units, Jabil. “Our investments in this industry enable customers to accelerate time to market and scale their solutions. Jabil plays an instrumental role in the industry with its capabilities in product development, industrialization, and factory automation.”
At NRF’24 (Booth 4375), Jabil will showcase the latest digital commerce innovations on behalf of leading retailers, such as Stop & Shop, along with game-changing retail tech solution providers, including Ocado, Revolut, SumUp, and VusionGroup, to name a few.
Automating Retail Workflows
As a manufacturing solutions provider with significant retail-industry experience, Jabil is uniquely positioned to keep pace with evolving omnichannel shopping experiences, changing customer preferences, ongoing labor constraints, and supply chain management complexities.
For Ocado Group, a technology-led, global software and robotics platform company, Jabil is expanding its additive manufacturing and scaling the manufacturing of Ocado’s Series 600 robot. The new, lighter and more efficient fulfilment robot enables a step change in the performance and economics of Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) for grocery and non-grocery applications. Over the past two years, Jabil has supported Ocado’s rapid design iterations by leveraging its complete range of additive manufacturing capabilities.
“Working with Jabil has enabled the commercialization of our Series 600 robot, which features around 300 3D-printed parts that slash overall weight by two thirds and empower us to be more creative with unique part geometries,” said Paul Turner, COO at Ocado. “We are benefiting from Jabil’s increased manufacturing capacity in Mexico, along with their know-how in additive manufacturing and materials science, to scale volume manufacturing of our cutting-edge robots.”
In-Store Digitalization Transforms Shopping Experiences
Badger Technologies, a product division of Jabil and pioneer in retail robotics, also is taking advantage of expanded manufacturing capacity in Mexico to increase production volumes while reducing supply chain and logistics costs, especially for customers in North America, which is considered one of the biggest retail markets in the world. Badger Technologies has deployed more than 650 multipurpose, autonomous robots throughout the U.S., including nearly 400 robots at Stop & Shop stores throughout the Northeast.
Badger Technologies robots work seamlessly with digital displays and Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs), fixed cameras, LIDAR, sensors, and other cloud-based web services to help retailers transform their stores into intelligent digital assets. For longstanding Jabil customer, VusionGroup, the ability to ramp manufacturing to produce millions of ESL tags monthly at Jabil’s expanded site in Mexico enables the company to keep pace with a steady stream of high-volume customer demands.
Moreover, Jabil’s precision automation solutions, which incorporate advanced quality testing, along with assembly and alignment capabilities, have helped VusionGroup optimize productivity and reliability of its latest EdgeSense™ and VUSION product lines while decreasing production cycle times. “Jabil has a history of meeting our rigorous demands for reliability, quality, and cost,” said Philippe Bottine, CEO of North America, VusionGroup (Booth 5420 at NRF’24). “We are pleased with how Jabil’s latest innovations in process automation are accelerating the production of our product portfolio, including smart rails that combine connectivity and energy, as well as battery-less digital labels with enhanced performance to provide a substantial carbon footprint reduction compared to any existing ESL solution.”
