Effects of the Demographic Change on Internal Logistics

Approaches for the preservation of the worker’s ability to work in logistics systems

Dennis Walch, Willibald A. Günthner, Martin Neuberger
JournalIndustrie Management
Issue Volume 25, 2009, Edition 2, Pages 67-70
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Abstract

The demographic change will be one of the big challenges for operational logistics in the upcoming years. With the aging of logistics workers, physical constraints increase especially when employment is characterized by high physical stress (e.g. like in production and logistics). That causes higher demands on the design of logistics workplaces. But how can companies react to this, taking into account that value added orientation leads to new demands to workers? Is there a chance that the increasing percentage of elder employees can properly fulfil the demands in the future? Whereas the ergonomic design of workplaces is the precondition, an intelligent labour organisation with diversified stress can preserve the worker’s ability to work.

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