DACHSER entered into a tight-knit research partnership with the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML. At the newly created ‘DACHSER Enterprise Lab’ in Dortmund, DACHSER employees will be working together with researchers from Fraunhofer IML on specific research and development projects that flow into DACHSER’s two business fields of Road Logistics and Air & Sea Logistics. The team’s aim is the targeted (further) development of pioneering technologies for across-the-board application in practice.

“For many years now, collaboration with a range of universities and development partners has been a mainstay of our corporate strategy. The DACHSER Enterprise Lab adds key competencies to our internal research and development capacity, and gives us flexible access to specialists,” says DACHSER CEO Bernhard Simon. He points out that Fraunhofer IML possesses outstanding expertise, state-of-the-art laboratories, and a wide range of motivated and creative researchers. When coupled with the longstanding experience of DACHSER’s logistics experts, he believes that this will further accelerate the company’s rate of innovation.

“We have set up our Enterprise Labs to transfer research results over to products or new business models as quickly as possible. By embracing new and interdisciplinary forms of collaborative development that shorten the distance between us, we can achieve a high degree of exchange between research and industry,” says Prof. Michael ten Hompel, managing director of Fraunhofer IML. “It puts us in a position in which we can flexibly and speedily put new technologies, trends, or business strategies into practice, and efficiently determine our priorities. This is an enormous competitive advantage for a globally connected logistics business such as DACHSER, with its complex networks and data structures. Our new Enterprise Lab together with DACHSER sets a clear benchmark in collaborative logistics and technology development.”