Dachser has entered into a partnership with the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics to work on research and development projects at the newly created Dachser Enterprise Lab in Dortmund.

According to Dachser, its employees will work together with researchers from the institute on projects that cover Dachser’s business fields of air and sea logistics and road logistics, with the aim of further developing pioneering technologies for across-the-board applications.

“For many years now, collaboration with a range of universities and development partners has been a mainstay of our corporate strategy,” said Bernhard Simon, CEO of Dachser. “The Dachser Enterprise Lab adds key competencies to our internal research and development capacity, and gives us flexible access to specialists.

He added that the combination of Dachser’s logistics expertise with Fraunhofer IML’s laboratories and researchers would accelerate the rate of innovation at the company.

The institute was founded in 1981 and consists of 260 employees and 250 postgraduates and students, all working on projects and solutions in the areas of materials handling, warehouse management, supply chain management, simulation-supported business and system planning, traffic systems, closed-loop economy, resources logistics, building logistics and e-business.

“We have set up our Enterprise Labs to transfer research results over to products or new business models as quickly as possible,” said Michael ten Hompel, managing director of Fraunhofer IML. “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. 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.”