How could new business model innovations revolutionize the information exchange in transportation?

This question was central to our master seminar on lots of exciting topics connected to digital platforms in transportation. On 19 January 2023, to officially close the seminar, 28 students presented the results of their seminar work at our Innovation Lab on Combined Transport at the House of Logistics and Mobility in Frankfurt (Main).

During the seminar, our students researched the potential of digital transport platforms to fundamentally change the organization of transport chains and what potential these platforms offer to increase efficiency and productivity along the transport chains. They examined the business models of existing platforms in the market and developed classifications for them. In some cases, the students addressed the entire intermodal transport chain or examined different solutions from other fields of transport (such as last mile/city logistics platforms) and specialized platforms (such as web-based time window management systems). They also made country comparisons (between transportation platforms in Germany and the U.S.), identified trends in platform solutions in the mobility sector (such as increasing sharing concepts), and applied these to freight transportation.

The team around Prof. Elbert thanks all students for the exciting lectures and lively discussions, and Anne Friedrich and Felix Roeper for the supervision of the course and successful closing event!