39-40/2021
Dear readers,
Can you sense it? Usually it’s the early morning, or the advent of spring that we can feel in the air. This time it could be the fading away of the period of anti-pandemic measures. The multifaceted experiences the team of the ITJ went through on its latest journeys to trade fairs and customers in France, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, to name but a few, gives food for thought. We engaged many people from the logistics industry in discussions, as well as many representative of shippers, and what we heard was that amidst all the tension in the supply chain and the concomitant hardship and costs we shouldn’t forget that strong demand rules the sector today – which brings in tidy sums of money in many quarters –, nor how scarce some of the resources available partially are.
This includes the human factor. People aren’t a hurdle that needs to be overcome on the path to digitalisation, but rather the essential counterpart for its success. We have to finally leave behind us the contradiction that man and machine are sometimes thought to be, as once again became clear to me in a conversation with Thomas Sticht of ACS Logistics (see our Focus on page 7). Digitalised mechanisms offset repetitive activities for employees and allow them to focus on their core tasks – serving customers, which serves everyone. That’s how digitalisation works.
Enjoy your read!
Yours cordially,
Christian Doepgen
Editor-in-chief
