Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions Collaborates with AWS to Drive Innovation and Efficiency in Global Logistics

The Bosch Group is a global leader in technology and services for the mobility, industrial technology, consumer goods, and energy and building technology sectors. The world’s largest automotive supplier by revenue, Bosch generated sales of 91.6 billion euros in 2023.

Several years ago, Bosch recognized the need for digitization in the logistics and transportation and sought to embark on a digital innovation initiative to address that need. Luke Hugel, president and regional business responsible at Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions North America, explains, “Digital solutions in the automotive mobility space has grown exponentially over the past decade, and we wanted to expand our offerings to meet the demand.”

To specifically enable digital innovation in the logistics sector, Bosch aimed to create an ecosystem of connected services to drive efficiencies in fleet management. Dr. Steffen Eccarius, globally responsible for Bosch L.OS and managing director for Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions in Europe, adds, “Most trucking solutions are not interconnected. There are multiple systems, and data doesn’t flow seamlessly between them. This requires manual interventions to transfer data between solutions, and business processes can’t be fully automated. That’s why we wanted to build ecosystems where solutions communicate freely, and processes run smoothly across system borders.”

To transform its ambitious vision into a viable solution, Bosch knew the importance of leveraging the right technology and expertise. Eccarius continues, “To create a system of connected services on a large scale and make it a standard in the market, we wanted to leverage the resources and recognition of a large global technology company like Amazon Web Services.”
 

To bring its vision for a new connected services ecosystem to life, Bosch embarked on a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). In late 2021, joint global teams from Bosch and AWS Professional Services began building out an initial design for the platform, completing a prototype in three months. AWS Professional Services was the implementation partner and provided supply chain and logistics business advisors to support across the business stream. Throughout the design and prototyping stages, the teams relied on AWS best practices and the AWS Well-Architected Framework. “The Well-Architected Framework and AWS best practices helped us ensure operational excellence, reliability, security, and performance efficiency from the beginning,” says Eccarius. AWS Professional Services also conducted a Cloud Maturity Assessment to assess AWS impact, focused on cloud maturity and adoption of best practices.

Within a year, in collaboration with AWS, Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions, delivered the first version of the Logistics Operating System (L.OS) platform. L.OS is an ecosystem, open marketplace, and state-of-the-art data platform (data mesh) for using and integrating services from different providers. AWS Professional Services helped build an AWS Landing Zone, based on AWS Control Tower, providing a scalable and highly automated foundation for fast scaling and global expansion, out of a single codebase. Additionally, AWS provided a global team of experts from AWS Professional Services, led by Europe and supported by India and the US, who assisted in the development and deployment of the platform. “We embraced the AWS approach of starting with the customer challenge and working backward to build the solution,” recalls Eccarius. “In close collaboration with AWS experts, we were able to deliver the first version of our Logistics Operating System to three regions within just one year.”

The platform is housed under the newly launched global business unit of Bosch, Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions. This unit aims to empower companies with a digital ecosystem for collaboration, co-creation, and innovation in the mobility sector. By leveraging this ecosystem, companies can build solutions that contribute to a safer and more sustainable future. In addition to the platform, the business unit offers managed cloud services to L.OS customers.

In preparation for the official launch of L.OS into production, Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions built on its strategic engagement with AWS by working with the AWS Professional Services team to facilitate a seamless launch in three regions. In July 2023, the L.OS platform officially launched across Europe, India, and the US. To ensure a smooth transition from development to the operational phase, Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions used AWS Countdown, a service that assesses operational readiness, risk, and planning capacity using AWS best practices. “We were tightly aligned with AWS consultants from the beginning, and together we had all the expertise we needed in developing and launching the L.OS platform,” Eccarius says. As of June 2024, 89 solutions are integrated into the platform.

Moreover, Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions worked with AWS Training and Certification to upskill its technical teams on AWS. “Without the expertise gained through AWS Training and Certification, it would have taken us much longer to launch the L.OS platform and get it into production,” says Eccarius. “The training helped not only the non-tech team to understand the core concepts behind a cloud platform but also our developers to deepen their knowledge for a wide range of competencies in areas including storage, networking, databases, security, and DevOps.”

In 2023, Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions worked with AWS Professional Services and experts in supply chain and innovation methodology, to create RevX, its first own AWS-native software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution on L.OS. RevX is a digital decision-making and load planning tool built on AWS services including AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and designed to help fleet dispatchers find and bid on freight more efficiently. “Fleet dispatchers face the challenge of finding freight every day,” says Hugel. “We wanted to build a solution that aggregates spot market loads across brokers into one unified tool.” Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions credits the rapid design and delivery of RevX to the AWS teams from Europe, India, and the US, who provided technical expertise and best practices.

In addition to RevX, L.OS provides solutions including Bosch Secure Truck Parking, Fleet Management, RideCare insight, and CO2 Emission Prediction.

Immediately after launching the L.OS platform, Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions began creating new business opportunities that are already driving innovation and efficiency in the global logistics industry. “RevX is a great example of integrating different services that would otherwise require customers to have separate logins and contracts and spend time and money combining those solutions,” says Hugel. In terms of efficiency, RevX unifies data from multiple load boards, so fleets no longer have to use multiple tabs to search across each load board, streamlining their workflow and saving valuable time. Hugel continues, “RevX is estimated to reduce empty truck miles by more than five percent, and our customers are seeing a 25 percent improvement in efficiency because dispatchers can find freight faster.” L.OS also integrates partner solutions from Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB), fostering innovation across the logistics ecosystem.

The Bosch Secure Truck Parking solution is another example of innovation on the L.OS platform. The solution helps dispatchers quickly and easily plan parking spaces to match driver routes using their existing fleet management tools. As a result, truck drivers can maximize their service hours and minimize off-route driving while searching for parking.

Another key benefit of the L.OS platform is increased environmental sustainability. “Globally, our long-term objective for L.OS is to enable a half-percent waste reduction across the entire supply chain, including transportation, inventory, warehouse, and logistics,” says Hugel. “This aligns with our corporate goal of making a positive, sustainable impact in every market we operate.”

Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions is currently working with AWS to develop new AI-driven solutions that automate processes. “Our vision for RevX is to evolve from a search solution to a recommendation engine, which would eliminate the need for dispatchers to compare data inputs. This could increase efficiency improvement from 25 percent to more than 90 percent,” says Hugel. Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions is also working with AWS on a proof of concept (POC) for a chatbot to simplify searching L.OS solutions. The chatbot will use Amazon Q during the POC and Amazon Bedrock for the implementation. “Our strategic collaboration with AWS does not stop,” says Eccarius. “This has been and will continue to be a very fruitful relationship between our two companies.”