third party logistics

The competitive pressure in the contract logistics industry is intense. Logistics providers must respond to tenders quickly and with convincing concepts. This article presents initial approaches to how logistics process planning in tender management can be supported using supervised learning methods. Under the premise that similar processes from past projects can be transferred and adapted to a project to be planned, an AI-based assistance system suggests appropriate process steps and MTM (Methods-Time Measurement) codes during planning. This procedure can accelerate process planning and lead to an increased quality of logistics processes to be planned. (Only in German)

Intense global competition, shorter product life cycles and an increasing number of variants require flexible and adaptable, but at the same time economical production and logistics systems. This requires constant replanning of factories and logistics systems. Value-adding processes are being outsourced to contract logistics providers. Contract logistics planners must respond to tenders as quickly as possible and develop a proposal with an initial planning concept and a cost estimation. Despite standardization efforts in planning, the knowledge is often only implicit at the planners. This article describes the need for support by an AI-based assistance system during the planning process and how a digital platform for such an assistance system should look like.

The growing tendency to outsource logistics has been postulated for many years. The unrealised outsourcing potential in Europe has, however, been growing since the last 3-5 years. According to a recent survey a realistic outsourcing potential of 16 billions can be attributed to the German logistics market alone. Insufficient competence of Third Party Logistics (TPL) providers has been postulated as one of the underlying reasons for not realising this enormous market potential. Based on the results of a case study this paper presents a model for contract logistics competence and shows how much the expectations towards the logistics providers can differ from logistics providers’ self assessment.