Trends in Logistics and Supply chain management

Over
the last few years, logistics and supply chain management have
undergone a transformation: It evolved from the classic “transport,
handling, warehousing” business with a strict functional
orientation into a global, network-integrating tasks field.
Currently, logistics is regarded as an essential part of the scope of
services offered by a company. At the same time, supply chain
management has made a decisive contribution to the competitiveness of
companies. Companies can influence exogenous trends only to a very
limited extent and, therefore, they have to find appropriate internal
ways of adapting. For this, they can partially use endogenous trends.
For example, they can counter the increasing lack of staff by
lowering the automation threshold However, controllable endogenous
trends can put a single company under pressure if it ignores them.
For example, it is possible that competitors who decentralize their
structures and systems, increase their robustness and consequently
develop a competitive advantage. Some company’s fall behind in the
new developments. The top trend, cost pressure, reflects the
sensitivity to cost of logistics or the logistics function across all
branches and companies. Customers’ increasing sensitivity to prices
for logistics services and increasing competition with rising
logistics costs
result in special challenges for logistics.
Forty-six per cent (46%) of the firms have indicated that their
adaptability regarding this is moderate to very low. In addition to
the requirement for cost-effective logistics services, the experts
also mention rising customer expectations with regard to flexibility
of logistics solutions. In many cases, it is not possible to full
both aspects. Customers want customized products and services, which
often go hand in hand with increased complexity. Complexity is caused
by the increasing number of products, parts, suppliers, services,
etc., as well as their dynamic changes over time; these all need to
be coordinated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the relevance
of the complexity trends for small companies to be significantly
less than that of the representatives of medium-sized and large
companies. The lack of qualified personnel in logistics is a further
obstacle for companies; 64% of the companies indicated a moderate to
low ability to adapt to this development. This result supports a
thesis of the 2012 study, which describes this as the greatest
challenge in the coming years. Individualization, changes in demand,
risks, and interruptions, as well as state regulation actually showed
slightly reduced relevance. As such the sustainability trend which,
comparatively, became increasingly relevant in logistics and supply
chain management, stands out. Thus sustainability is an overarching
requirement and must, therefore, be considered from the supply chain
perspective. At the same time, 50% of the respondents estimated their
company’s ability to respond to sustainability requirements as
moderate to very low.