Column: Intra Logistics
Sometimes it just goes uphill
It's high season again for optimists, pessimists, know-it-alls and smart alecks. For crystal ball gawkers, economic prophets, economists and naysayers: What will 2019 be like?
The signs are good: every company that doesn't deal in diesel cars doesn't know what to do with the orders at the moment. And intralogistics providers are moaning the most about workloads because their customers have somehow discovered that they can increase their profits with the right material flow solutions and don't need as many staff to do so. Some intralogistics providers are already fully booked in 2019, smiling mildly at the question of what the new year will be like and secretly hoping that everything will calm down a little so that they can finally deliver again and reduce their employees' overfilled working time accounts. Others see things very differently. Because the signs are bad: Brexit, car crisis and diesel affair, trade war, EU in a permanent slump, Italy is the new Greece, global flight, shift to the right.
A dangerous orange-colored simpleton in the USA, FC Bayern not having been soccer champions for weeks, Germany without a government. The government doomsayers, who have made a semi-scientific calculation that the German economy grew more slowly in the third quarter than at any other time in recent memory. The economic experts who have lowered their growth forecasts for 2019 from 1.8 to 1.5 percent. It's the old game of the glass half full and half empty, and I'll spare us all the engineering joke that it's just the wrong size. It should be clear to even the most optimistic of calculators that things can't always go steeply uphill, sometimes they just go uphill. And even those who don't step outside the door without a belt, suspenders and both hands on their waistband will remember the example of 2010: Even after a crash, things are looking up! Whether things continue to go steeply uphill in 2019 or only uphill: we just mustn't listen to the typical German statement-makers - who talk up crises and call it "caution". Who brake on the highway without reason, and five kilometers down the road everyone wonders why they are stuck in a traffic jam. Better to think for yourself and speak plainly. Work forwards and continue to be undeterred by any signs. Then 2019 will also be a success.
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