Myths belong in the storybook

"But here, as everywhere else, things turn out differently than you think" wrote Wilhelm Busch in 1882 in the third chapter of the poem "Plisch und Plum". The sentence should not be missing from any article about Logistics 4.0 and certainly not from any article about e-commerce. Will my parcel with our desired order arrive by drone, will it be in the trunk, will it arrive today or tomorrow, or does it not even need to arrive because the 3D printer has already printed out the object of my desire? Questions whose answers are essential for logistics experts who (have to) pave the way for this in the background. But even futurologists and trend foxes, if they are honest, just shrug their shoulders and resort to Franz Beckenbauer's universal comment "Let's see".

Martin Schrüfer, Ltd. editor-in-chief material flow, LT-manager

Now a leap from the soccer pitch to the venerable Material Flow Congress in Garching. There, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Johannes Fottner (see p. 14) recently got all too enthusiastic about the world of technology with the words "Searching means being open, but also having the humility to review the path you have taken. If there are stable processes with clear rules in the warehouse, it is not always necessary to be absolutely flexible" from Cloud 4.0. Management consultant Gregor Blauermel assisted Fottner with the clever sentence: "We are currently getting our hands on exciting elements that can be used to build the future of logistics, now the question is how to combine them and what will prevail." You can subscribe to that, because the mythification of key terms such as 4.0 or 3D is getting out of hand in many of my colleagues' comments. But myths belong primarily in the storybook!

Companies such as SSI Schaefer show what is feasible and sensible. They are increasingly taking the supply chain into their own hands when it comes to e-commerce. As a warehouse expert, SSI Schaefer is leaving the terrain it has successfully worked in for decades. Searching means, right: being open! As the solutions described and presented here impressively demonstrate, intralogistics must think beyond the warehouse and apply its impressive process knowledge to larger scales.

Our "Materialfluss direkt" supplement in print and online kicks off a loose series with topics that move the industry. I look forward to receiving your feedback or suggestions for topics by e-mail.

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