How can research contribute to current challenges to business practice? The shift in transport routes or new demands on technology, for example, require new perspectives.

A productive exchange between practice and research on this topic took place last Tuesday with the works councils of DB Cargo AG in our Innovation Lab Combined Transport at the House of Logistics and Mobility in Frankfurt (Main).

The guests gained an in-depth insight into how application-oriented and practice-related our research is and what potential research cooperations offer: Of great interest was the presentation of an already completed and highly future-oriented project, which dealt with the problem of underutilized transport capacities. With the help of the project partner's evaluation of historical data, it was possible to create overbooking strategies and make reliable statements about possible capacity utilization increases.

With a very unique and, of course, practice-oriented view, the guests asked exciting questions about current challenges, such as new requirements for technology and their implementation – topics with which our current research is also concerned, as for example in the context of our research lab innovative freight car m².

Special thanks for the great planning and realization of the exchange go, among others, to Sascha Barthel and Frank Mattusch on the part of HOLM and Andreas Neuhoff from EVA Bildung & Beratung GmbH and, of course, to Prof. Ralf Elbert for the vivid and lively presentation and discussion.

We are grateful for the great exchange and are looking forward to the next visit!