We are pleased about another successful guest lecture! With Dr. Felix Heusler from Isabellenhütte Heusler GmbH & Co. KG, we had the pleasure of welcoming an alumnus to our campus at TU Darmstadt on June 29, 2022. As part of the course “Management of Value Networks”, Dr. Heusler spoke about supply chain disruptions and gave the students exciting insights into the current challenges of procurement and supply chain management. An important and topical issue – especially regarding current challenges in terms of raw materials and supply problems! We would like to thank him very much on behalf of the team around Prof. Elbert and Raphael Hackober. We are looking forward to the next time!

Last week, the summer party of the Innovation Alliance between Deutsche Bahn AG and TU Darmstadt took place: on June 23, 2022, the alliance members met for a summerly get-together to exchange information about current projects and the activities of various working groups. Within the Innovation Alliance, our department is represented by the “Research Lab Innovative Freight Car m²”, a cooperation institute between TU Darmstadt and DB Cargo. In the context of this, we would like to express our sincere thanks for and are pleased about the presence of Arne Redlin from DB Cargo and Raphael Hackober from the department at this year's summer party. The aim of the cooperation institute is to promote joint research and cooperation in the field of planning and analysis of logistics and transport services and to create attractive offers in the areas of teaching, training and further education as well as university marketing. Joint research projects form the core of the Research Lab Innovative Freight Car m².

Another successful guest lecture in this semester: As part of the lecture “Intermodal Transport Services”, we welcomed Axel Marschall, CSO and SMO in Logistics Mobility and Service Industry from Infront Consulting & Management GmbH to Technical Universität Darmstadt. Mr. Marschall held a captivating lecture on Business Model Innovation in Logistics and Supply Chain Management and gave the students valuable insights on use cases of business transformation. A big Thank You from the team around Prof. Elbert and Hongjun Wu. We are looking forward to the next time!

Sharing experiences and knowledge is what drives progress, right?

Last Thursday, on 23 June 2022, our team around Prof. Elbert, Hongjun Wu and Julia Wenzel welcomed 17 students from our master’s seminar to our Innovation Lab on Combined Transport at the House of Logistics and Mobilty in Frankfurt (Main). It was a fitting and successful end to the seminar: in groups, the students presented a poster of their own creation and led a discussion round. We are grateful to our students for the productive and active exchange on “The Future of Sustainable Transportation – How can intermodal freight transport contribute to reach the EU’s climate goals?” in the course of this seminar, as well as for the creative videos, presentations, posters and discussion polls they were able to create. We are looking forward to next time!

Yesterday, we were very happy to welcome Klaus-Uwe Sondermann, Director of KombiConsult GmbH on campus for a guest lecture on Combined Transport, on the history and challenges, on what “players” are involved and what the competition looks like. We expect that all attending students are now experts on the topic! A big thank you to Mr. Sondermann for his time and fascinating lecture! We are looking forward to the next time.

Combined transport is seen as having great potential for successfully managing current and future transport volumes and supporting the achievement of climate goals. Prof. Elbert and Michael Gleser, as part of the “KV-Radar” research project, have identified 27 initiatives which can shape the future of combined road/rail freight transport in a promising way and promote it. The magazine “Internationales Verkehrswesen” reports on the results of the research project in the current issue 2|2022. We are happy about the article and the great interest in this exciting research topic!

What can we do to decarbonize freight transport? How can freight transport avoid emissions?

To elaborate on this, we held a workshop we conducted a short and very productive workshop last week with numerous fellow researchers from the area of connecting logistics and freight transport operations to prepare for our research group SIG B3’ 2 planned sessions at the WCTRS Online Conference in 2022. A big thank you to all participants for their time and valuable input.

Am vergangenen Mittwoch, den 26. Mai 2022 durften wir Klaus Langendorf und Niklas Schink von der DB Cargo AG bei uns am Campus begrüßen. Wir freuen uns sehr, dass Herr Langendorf als Aufsichtsratsmitglied der DB Cargo unseren wissbegierigen Studierenden einen Einblick in die Arbeit des Aufsichtsrates vermittelt hat und ihnen anschaulich erklärte, welche Aufgaben der Aufsichtsrat innehat und tagtäglich bewältigt. Wir bedanken uns für den spannenden Austausch und den informativen Vortrag! Im Anschluss führte Prof. Elbert die Lehrveranstaltung fort mit dem Thema „Strategie und Strategiemanagement“. Ein großes Dankeschön geht auch an unsere Studierenden für die rege Teilnahme. Wir freuen uns aufs nächste Mal!

The recently launched research project “Decentralized Planning of Platoons” is the subject of an exciting interview with Ralf Elbert and project manager Felix Roeper and was published in DVZ (Deutsche Verkehrs-Zeitung". We are happy about the great article!

Last Saturday, the Chair celebrated its 10+1 year anniversary. Of course, the alumni were not to be missed, but the current team was also happy about the exchange. The developments of the last years were presented in an entertaining way, shortly followed by a guided tour through the offices – after all, the workspace has changed as well. The team around Ralf Elbert would like to thank all participants for the great organization and the successful event. We look forward to many more successful years at Darmstadt University of Technology – and to the next joint celebration