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Sep 23, 2020 at 7:26 AMLIS Logistische Informationssysteme AG is celebrating its 40th anniversary. 1980, Hilmar Wagner founded the predecessor company of LIS. With this, the company pioneered the field of freight forwarding software. The TMS WinSped software is among the market leaders.
(Greven) LIS Logistische Informationssysteme AG is celebrating its company anniversary: Building on the revolutionary ideas of founder and current chairman of the supervisory board Hilmar Wagner, which first enabled transport order processing on computers, the Greven-based company has been developing powerful and highly customizable freight forwarding software for four decades. The greatest success is the market-leading Transport Management System (TMS) WinSped, whose first version was released in 1997 and is still in use today by over 1,000 customers with around 1,200 locations across Europe. Wagner has since handed over the operational business to his son Magnus Wagner and Rolf Hansmann.
“Our goal has always been to provide our customers with added value through new ideas. We have been proving this for 40 years now,” says Hilmar Wagner, chairman of the supervisory board of LIS Logistische Informationssysteme AG. The technology enthusiast and business economist looks back on a tumultuous life story: In 1980, he founded the predecessor company of today’s LIS AG together with Dr. Reinhard Liedl and began programming dispatch software on behalf of a forwarding company in Münster. Just four years later, his revolutionary ideas first enabled transport order processing on computers.
Partnership with IBM
When the financial backers withdrew and the project was on the verge of failure, he quickly acquired the rights to the software and ambitiously continued to develop it on his own: “We had developed so much passion for the program that we didn’t want to give up,” says Wagner. Through a distribution partnership with the American tech giant IBM and the increasing demand for personal computers, his vision received the necessary boost. “Suddenly, the market for corresponding software was there,” explains the founder.
The success story took off: Wagner not only convinced new customers but also launched the first standardized programs in the 1980s. At the same time, the company was renamed to LIS Wagner & Partner GmbH, and other creative minds like Volker Lückemeier and Volker von Lojewski joined the company, who would significantly shape LIS in the following years as board members and chairman of the supervisory board. “The two were not only reliable business partners but also long-time friends. Unfortunately, they will not be able to celebrate our company’s 40th birthday,” laments Wagner.
Freight Forwarding Software WinSped Since 1997
At the beginning of the new decade – 1990 – the company created SPEDIA, an industry solution that could first be applied on network-capable computers. However, the biggest coup came three years after the move to its current location in Greven, with the first version of the SPEDIA successor WinSped in 1997. The modular and multilingual program quickly developed into one of the industry-leading transport management systems thanks to the establishment of Windows as an operating system and is now in use across Europe. In the same year, the company was renamed to LIS Logistische Informationssysteme AG.
To this day, the application area of the software has continued to grow. “Our company has proven to be as adaptable as our software,” says Wagner. He has now completely handed over the operational business to his son Magnus Wagner, who leads the company together with his board colleague Rolf Hansmann. Hilmar Wagner will continue to be available to his company as chairman of the supervisory board. “As a family business, it is important to us that we look forward together and that our decisions consistently follow a common thread,” explains Wagner regarding the generational change that took place in May 2020.
Photo: © LIS / Caption: Founder Hilmar Wagner (r.) has handed over the operational business of LIS Logistische Informationssysteme AG to his son Magnus Wagner (l.) and Rolf Hansmann (m.) and is serving in an advisory capacity as chairman of the supervisory board.
