Autor: Meike Schröder

The integration of information technologies in the production environment proceeds and is summarized under the term ’Industry 4.0’. As a consequence, new challenges and opportunities transform the risk landscape of supply chains substantially. Acknowledging this, our article outlines the impact of Industry 4.0 and formulates first recommendations for practitioners especially in the field of supply chain risk management.

Nowadays, supply chains are highly complex and exposed to an increasing vulnerability against risks. This paper presents an approach how to implement supply chain risk management with an acceptable effort, by considering company- and supply chain-specific factors. Furthermore, a research project about the supply chain risk management auditing is presented which focuses on durable effectiveness of the entire system.

In the context of risk management the demographic change is reflected in demand and environmental risks. On the one hand, the requirements of products’ target groups are changing. On the other hand, the labour bottleneck is increasing due to the shift in population and age structure. When choosing strategies and measures for dealing with the demographic change in supply chains, companies should consider organizational as well as technological and personnel management-related aspects. In this connection, the integral examination of the complete product line as well as the company’s and the supply chain partners’ development of capabilities are essential.

Globalisation, shorter product life cycles and mass customization are only some keywords which describe the logistics branch. They lead to modified general conditions in the industry and to effects on the employment. Fields of activities and responsibilities are changed as well as demands on further education. Although logistics companies have realized theses changes, they still do not take them into account in their personnel planning. The article shows the interdependencies between general trends in logistics and organisation science and their effects on quantitative and qualitative effects on employment.