Logistics is dominated by various new trends

In present time, logistics is characterized by constant struggle for flexibility, with costs, ecology requirements and the need to recruit skilled workers. Demand for cooperation is growing among all participants in the supply chain, in response to the fact that deliveries in JIT or JIS mode are no longer domain of automotive industry. Moreover, today’s changes concern not only logistics, but also production and trade.

In FMCG and especially in progressively developing e-commerce there is an issue a combination of centralization of reserves in order to reduce costs alongside with ensuring short delivery times. Logistic operators respond to these needs by extending offer of services. They are also increasingly focusing on smaller customers. Especially in FMCG logistics there is another important trend – promotions, in which already over 50 percent of goods is often sold. In this situation, importance of timely information for logistics operators grows as they need to be able improving their ability to provide first-rate service without undue delay and cost.

Today customers require a customized product with immediately delivered shipment, at any place, in most ecological-friendly manner and supplemented with other services. Suppliers must react and they transfer sales to e-commerce and redevelop supply both chain and production.
The great problem of recent years is increasingly labour shortage for logistics at all working positions. In fact, changes in production and logistics are not isolated; it is a reaction to the development of the whole society and its way of life.

For example, the logistics provider Dachser needs to cope with new phenomena in logistics. These include the globalization of international trade with high demands on the flexibility of logistic processes. In addition, a great effect was created by economic crisis, for it brought pressure on cost and savings.

As the automation of production improves, importance of digitizing data is increasing. This is good news for logistics. It opens up new possibilities for data exchange between manufacturing companies on the one side and logistics provider on the other. This brings further acceleration and enhancement for the entire supply chain.

The rapid development of new communication technologies makes possible gathering and processing huge amounts of data. This is not new for Dachser. At the headquarters in Kempten, Germany, Dachser runs its own IT department, which develops IT applications suitable to the most demanding market requirements. This department currently employs approximately 600 specialists. Dachser has built a large data architecture, which is constantly updated and improved in collaboration with customers. Dachser does not want to miss the potential of interconnecting relevant customer data with logistics data as they see this as the future of logistics. Both Logistics 4.0 and growing digitalization offer significant opportunities for the development of increasingly interconnected global markets. Those companies may win, that are able to provide logistics without national boundaries, but with deep knowledge of all promising local markets.

As today’s logistics is changing according to the requirements of customers, logistics facilities are being changed too. In this field, there are a number of transient trends. Each of solutions must correspond to the task of delivering goods to the end customer as fast as possible. This raises a number of new requirements in the modern logistics centres that went through dramatic change since the time of simple warehouses.

The era of automated goods handling is currently starting and the investment to automation reaches a high level. Nevertheless, companies need a relatively long time to prepare the automated processes and it is not always easy to find the right direction. Now it is therefore time of learning for users, developers and government offices since the introduction of automated processes in the warehouse means also a number of processes for permitting construction and implementation. Today’s warehouse has become an indeed independent unit and warehousing is more important for many companies than actual production. This trend will probably continue.