As part of the WCTRS Virtual Meet 2022, Prof. Elbert and his team organized two sessions on “Climate Change – The role that freight transport can play to avoid emissions”. The first session was organized in cooperation with the Transportation Research Board’s AT045 Intermodal Freight Transport Committee and highlighted different perspectives from Europe and North America. For both sessions we welcomed Prof. Thierry Vanelslander, who gave an interesting keynote on “How to decarbonize freight transport?”.

It was finally that time again: as part of our Logistics Live! event, we started an excursion at our department again this year. About 20 students of the TU Darmstadt – mainly from our Master's seminar – joined us. Together with Hongjun Wu and Julia Wenzel from Prof. Elbert's team, they set off for Ludwigshafen for two plant tours in one day. First, the tour went through the KTL Kombi-Terminal Ludwigshafen. The students learned more about the handling of intermodal transports in one of the largest container terminals in Europe. After a short lunch break, the tour followed through the extensive BASF plant, where the students gained exciting insights into Bulk Logistics and also into the in-house development of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) to improve internal logistics. A big thank you for the informative tours and exciting insights – we are looking forward to next time!

Das Leben ist ein ständiger Austausch – so auch für unsere Studierenden, die am vergangenen Dienstag die Gelegenheit hatten, das House of Logistics and Mobility kennenzulernen. Dort besuchten die Expert:innen von morgen unter Begleitung von Ralf Elbert zunächst unseren interaktiven Showroom, das „Innovationslabor Kombinierter Verkehr“ und erfuhren mehr über anwendungsorientierte Forschung und die Komplexität der Transportkette im Kombinierten Verkehr. Im Anschluss daran begrüßte sie Holger Bartels im DB Cargo Lab, der ihnen mit großer Begeisterung vom Asset Intelligence Center (AIC) des Labs erzählte, in dem digitale und automatisierte Lösungen entwickelt werden, um den Zugang zum Schienenverkehr zu erleichtern, die Kapazität zu erhöhen und die Steuerung zu optimieren. Mithilfe von KI und dem IOT werden hier plattformübergreifende Herausforderungen im Schienenverkehr bearbeitet, um die Attraktivität und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit zu erhöhen. Besonders praxisnahe Beispiele, wie zustandsabhängige Wartung von Güterwagen oder automatisierte Schadenerkennung, zeigten den Studierenden, wie Studieninhalte in der Praxis Umsetzung finden. Wir bedanken uns herzlich für den spannenden Austausch und freuen uns auf zukünftige Besuche!

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!