Logistics

The most important value-adding industrial business processes are product creation and order processing. For 40 years now, Industry 4.0 Science and its predecessor titles have supported the development and implementation of the software used in these industrial business processes. In honor of the journal’s 40th anniversary, a systematic literature review is carried out to identify trends that played a role in the past but no longer do today. The research provides some surprising insights into the topics that have been important in the last 40 years – as well as those that will remain relevant in the future.

An increased awareness of risks and rising incidents prompt companies to enhance the resilience of their supply chains. While various measures can be employed to increase resilience, a parallel consideration of a multitude of metrics is necessary to explicitly evaluate its impact on supply chain resilience. The paper presents approaches that facilitate the comparability of resilience across alternative supply chain designs by combining various metrics into a single numerical index. Additionally, innovative technologies are highlighted that can help to create resilient supply chains.

Global supply and value chains have become increasingly complex and interconnected, exposing companies to a range of risks caused by natural disasters, political instability, or global pandemics. The paper outlines some strategic options for companies to improve the resilience of their value chains, namely expansion of local or global supply chains, regional concentration or global diversification of production capacities, and insourcing or outsourcing activities. Data of 314 German manufacturing firms is used to investigate the influence of different digital technologies and adaptable production systems.

The planning of logistics processes and their efficient implementation are decisive competitive factors for customized plant construction. On the construction site, however, the collection of logistics data is often neglected, preventing the project planner from building a reliable database. Related information gaps can be closed with the help of a digital shadow that collects logistics-relevant data (partially) automatically, stores them in a consistent manner and makes them available to project management. This article describes the first important results of a research project on information and communication processes in construction site logistics and explains their vital role in the development and use of a digital shadow.

How can organisations successfully participate in interoperable and decentralised data ecosystems? To answer this question, this paper presents a process model using the transport logistics industry as an example, which methodically describes the collaborative and interdisciplinary development of services in the decentralised federated data ecosystem Gaia-X [6]. The model supports evaluation and decision-making processes within the development of decentralised data ecosystems in practice and helps IT decision-makers and participating stakeholders to identify the relevant communication flows in a use case. It can be used independently for specific use cases, data spaces and connector technologies and ensures that the communication and alignment of individual development statuses in a decentrally organised framework is comprehensible and understandable for the overall context.