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The start-up company NautilusLog has been working on the digitisation of shipping for two years now. For the maritime industry, however, cooperation with founders is uncharted territory. This is why the cooperation with renowned scientific institutions like Fraunhofer is so important for NautilusLog founder Otto Klemke.

Logistics and trade companies are constantly looking for digital solutions that make processes and systems more efficient, secure and user-friendly. At present, large companies in particular are deliberately using open source software for this purpose, i.e. freely available software instead of commercial programs. Stefan Reuss, Head of Digital Solutions and IT of Würth Industrie Service, also considers this approach to be the right way forward in the platform economy.

Swarms of autonomous vehicles are the symbol for logistics 4.0. With the small, innovative "LoadRunner®" transport robot, scientists at Fraunhofer IML and TU Dortmund University have now developed an intelligent vehicle system to be used in intralogistics that shows its full strength in the swarm.

The Graduate School of Logistics in Dortmund is a unique training programme for logistics doctoral candidates in Germany. Gerald Müller of DB Schenker explains his company's commitment to the Summer School at Fraunhofer IML in an interview with “logistics ahead”.

Logistics has once again made a name for itself as a key science for our industrial future in the context of the Federal Government's Year of Science which has “ Working World of the Future” as its motto. Using intralogistics as an example, Benedikt Mättig from the “Innovationlab Hybrid Services in Logistics” explains how new technologies can improve work in logistics and production.

The “ALEES” research project not only provides new impetus for the supply of inner city goods in the future. It is rather an example of successful cross-border cooperation, says Kris Neyens, Manager Internationalisation at VIL (VIL Flanders Innovation Cluster for Logistics).

The new ML2R Competence Center for Machine Learning (ML2R), officially opened at the end of January 2019, connects the different research institutions in this field in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, including the Fraunhofer IML.

The project L4MS (Logistics for Manufacturing SMEs), funded by the European Commission, started on October 1, 2017. The aim of the project is to digitise intralogistics automation in factories so that suppliers of automation and logistics solutions can develop up to ten times faster and cheaper than at current prices.

The L4MS initiative opens the door for SMEs to utilize robotics and other advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtualization – a big chance for the European industry. In this initiative, Fraunhofer IML is responsible the technical lead and the coordination of developing a central IoT-Platform.

Digital technologies and bio-intelligence do no compete with each other - quite the contrary: looking at nature's organisational principles creates new opportunities for companies to successfully implement Industry 4.0.