IN Brief:
- Loblaw is extending EAIGLE's Vision AI technology across multiple yards and distribution centres.
- The system automates routine gate processes while capturing vehicle and freight information in real time.
- EAIGLE's platform integrates with existing WMS, TMS, YMS, and ERP environments rather than operating as an isolated gate system.
Loblaw Companies Limited is expanding EAIGLE’s computer-vision gate automation across multiple Canadian yards and distribution centres after earlier installations reduced processing times and improved data accuracy.
The retailer is scaling EAIGLE’s AVAC technology to automate routine vehicle-access processes and capture operational information as trucks enter and leave logistics sites. The platform applies Vision AI to vehicle validation and freight-data capture, turning a process traditionally dependent on guards, paperwork, and manual data entry into a connected part of the distribution operation.
Distribution-centre gates occupy relatively little physical space, but delays there can affect a much larger network. Drivers may need to provide booking references, trailer details, load information, and identification before entering, while site teams have to establish whether the vehicle is expected and where it needs to move next.
Those transactions can become particularly cumbersome at busy sites where inbound supplier deliveries, outbound store replenishment, empty equipment, contractors, and other traffic share the same access points. A few additional minutes on every vehicle can translate into queues, lost driver time, and greater congestion around the yard.
EAIGLE’s system uses computer vision to validate vehicles and capture freight information in real time. The resulting data can then be passed into existing warehouse management, transport management, yard management, and ERP systems rather than being held separately within a gate application.
That integration is central to the operating case. A truck reaching the barrier is not simply an access-control event: its arrival may affect a dock booking, yard position, warehouse workload, inventory availability, and the driver’s remaining working time. If the gate and planning systems use different identifiers or timestamps, staff may have to reconcile the same vehicle movement several times before unloading begins.
Loblaw is extending the technology after early deployments produced what the companies describe as reductions in processing times, improved driver experience, and greater accuracy at the gate and in the yard. The current announcement does not provide a site-by-site performance dataset, so the scale of those gains cannot yet be independently compared between facilities.
The decision to expand across multiple sites nevertheless moves the programme beyond a restricted technology trial. A system deployed across different yards has to cope with variations in site design, lighting, weather, vehicle flows, security processes, and local operating procedures while maintaining a consistent data structure.
Wael Yehia, Vice President, National Transportation at Loblaw, said: “We’re always looking for practical ways to improve how products move through our network.”
The emphasis on practical improvement is useful because gate automation can be overshadowed by more visible warehouse technologies. Automated storage systems, robots, and high-speed sortation receive greater attention inside distribution centres, but their performance can still be undermined if inbound trailers queue outside or outbound vehicles wait unnecessarily for checks and paperwork.
Vision systems can also provide a richer record than a conventional barrier transaction. Cameras and AI models can associate vehicle information with an expected movement, allowing the gate event to become another live logistics milestone rather than a manually entered timestamp.
That additional automation creates its own operational requirements. Cameras have to work in poor weather and changing light, vehicle identifiers need to match records in transport and yard systems, and exception procedures remain necessary when a vehicle or booking cannot be recognised correctly.
Human oversight therefore remains part of the process. A failed automated validation cannot simply leave a driver at the gate indefinitely, while an incorrect positive identification could create security or operational problems inside the yard. Sites still require a defined route for resolving exceptions without allowing the automated queue to stall behind them.
The system also has to distinguish between better data capture and better yard performance. Knowing precisely when a trailer arrived does not by itself create an available dock, and identifying a vehicle automatically does not remove congestion elsewhere on the site. The value comes when that information is connected quickly enough to influence the next decision.
For Loblaw, network scale increases the potential benefit. Deploying a common process across multiple distribution centres can produce comparable information about arrival patterns, gate dwell, and vehicle movement, making recurring delays easier to identify than when each site records traffic differently.
It also gives transport planners a more consistent operating event. If arrival and departure records are captured in the same way across the network, they can be compared against carrier schedules, dock plans, and journey performance without first cleaning data produced through a mixture of manual and automated systems.
EAIGLE describes AVAC as technology that strengthens existing workflows rather than replacing them. That is an important distinction: the project is not a wholesale warehouse-system change, but an attempt to improve the point at which road transport becomes a physical yard movement.
The expanded Loblaw rollout will now show whether early improvements can be reproduced across different facilities and traffic profiles. Gates may be a narrow part of the distribution estate, but they are also the place where a transport plan physically arrives. Removing friction there gives the rest of the warehouse a better chance of operating to the schedule already sitting in its systems.
