Logistics

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.

Knowledge management can be an important competitive advantage for many companies. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which often have limited access to capital. The challenge in contract logistics is to identify an appropriate knowledge management approach. In particular, the process of proposal preparation is characterized by a high complexity and intensity of specific knowledge. This article presents a knowledge management approach for the tender preparation process of SME in contract logistics.

Lean material supply and provision concepts are crucial to an efficient production system. In the automobile production are common supply concepts: in-sequence material provision (JIS), vehicle specific sets and non-mixed provision. For the provision of sets containing different part clusters efficient picking processes are necessary. Picking is usually carried out in supermarkets close to the assembly line, which are replenished by warehouses. A scientific project of MAN Truck & Bus AG and the Technische Universität München aims at streamlining these processes and proposes to merge warehousing and picking stages. Prerequisite of a broad implementation of those one-stage material provision concepts is a change in the material supply and disposition strategy.

Design, planning and control of complex and integrated solutions are some of the most important keys to the competitiveness and innovativeness of enterprises. Unfortunately a lack of connectivity often hampers the way to efficient value added in production and logistics networks, since not all of the information you need is available on time. Especially in the automotive industry in which each process is timed closely and production has to stop when a part is not delivered just in time, the interfaces between the different departments of a company or even between whole logistics networks play an important role. For this reason, the FIR at the RWTH Aachen researches intensively to solve these issues with innovative concepts.

The concern of an interdisciplinary research project called Dynamo PLV from institutes of the TU Darmstadt and the European Business School is to combine the three topics production, logistics and traffic and merge them together. Goal of the project is to generate holistic approaches to resolve disciplinary boundaries. Integrated value adding networks which can already be located in the automotive industry will have strong effects on competitiveness of industrial locations in the future. This calls for an overlapping consideration of the systems production, logistics and traffic. Aim of this paper is to show and identify the differing interests and conflicts between the actors of a value adding network from the automotive industry. Conflicting goals between multi-layers like intra-company areas (logistics and procurement) or areas along the supply chain (supplier and OEM) or beyond the supply chain (companies and public authorities) prevent optimal resource use and reduce ...

One of the main challenges in urban logistic is the collaborated handling of freight transportation and urban public transport. Especially during peak periods, e.g. when commuters travel between their place of residence and place of work, the urban infrastructure for car traffic and public transport risks to collapse. In addition, often the freight transportation in urban areas competes with the public transport because of the use of the same road infrastructure. Therefore, it would make sense also to use free capacities of public transportations like trams for freight transports. First, this paper analyzes current concepts of urban logistics and concepts for the use of freight trams. Second, a new approach for the use of autonomous trolleys combined with the use of public trams will be introduced by the authors.

Decreasing costs in transport and communications as well as some other often globally significant factors made today´s international trade more extensive than ever before. Industrial products are the most important good of the time we live in and the trade in services, too, is increasingly gaining significance. Companies which intend to join or extend businesses with Russia are in need of reliable logistics partners for those markets, which are still in the process of being established and which place very special requirements on anyone who wants to be successful there. This article provides information on the nature of such requirements, the manner in which German enterprises master them and on what interested entrepreneurs should keep in mind.

Within the BRIC states the Russian economy seems to be a latecomer. Especially in comparison to China’s economy, which has grown with rates up to eleven percent during the last years, the Russian economy develops more slowly. However, Russia’s economy still offers good opportunities to foreign countries. In particular large public funded investment projects for modernising Russia’s infrastructure will require foreign technology and corresponding machines within the next years. With an increase in demand, the choice of a suitable supply chain strategy becomes more and more important for foreign companies participating in the Russian market.

In industrial environments conveyor-technical arrangements for the transport of the working components between the several production steps are essential. The coverage of the real movements and speeds, which often entail deviations of the planned actions, is used to realize an efficient optimization of these variable logistics.

The relevance of wind energy for the German energy supply increases steadily. This development is driven by the German withdrawal from nuclear energy as well as the ambitious climate policy goals. Furthermore, the fossil energy resources are limited. The logistic network which is needed to create an offshore-wind park is affected by dynamic disturbances like weather conditions as well as other influences. They have an impact on the material-pull which is initiated by the offshore construction site. Already scheduled processes cannot be proceeded which necessitates rescheduling of material flow process-plans. Sometimes material is also pushed back into the network.