The German Material Flow Congress was held for the 29th time in mid-March under this heading. The two organizers, the Chair of Materials Handling Material Flow Logistics (fml) at the Technical University of Munich and the VDI Bezirksverein München, Ober- und Niederbayern e.V., presented the event under the motto "Automation on the advance! Man on the retreat?". Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the congress was not held at the Technical University of Munich in Garching as usual, but was offered as a free online event. Congress director Professor Johannes Fottner, head of the fml chair as well as deputy chairman of the VDI technical logistics division, opened the congress with a short address on the current situation. With far more than 650 registrations for the virtual event, he could already speak of a success for the congress.
Dr. Christian Jacobi moderated the subsequent plenary session. Following their keynote speeches, Max Meister from Ludwig Meister GmbH & Co. KG, Martin Rademaker as a member of the board of Fiege Logistik Stiftung & Co. KG and Dr. Christian Baur as CEO of Swisslog AG in a hybrid panel discussion live on site in Garching. They addressed the question of the extent to which advancing automation solutions will displace people from their familiar working environment.
During lunch time, the participants had the opportunity to inform themselves about the current research projects of the chair fml in a virtual poster session. Likewise, the two organizers offered participants the opportunity to network via a virtual exchange room using Zoom.
After the lunch break, the second part of the day began, in which further representatives from industry and research presented current developments in intralogistics.
In the session "Logistics overcomes crises", Werner Hortig reported as Managing Director of Freier Group Logistics GmbH & Co. KG reported on textile logistics in Corona times. He was able to tell about his experiences as well as the impact on global supply chains at the s.Oliver brand. According to him, improvisation is part of the design principle of logistics.
Maurijn Hellenthal from Arvato Supply Chain Solutions also highlighted the challenges of the Covid 19 panedemic. The focus of his presentation was on warehousing and the transition from store delivery to end-customer shipping.
In the subsequent session "Taking the next step in logistics with IOT", three more exciting presentations from the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and automation followed.
In addition, BMW Motoren GmbH, with Josef Pilstl as speaker, presented its process of how innovation is implemented at BMW from the idea to series production readiness. Building on this, the audience was given an insight into the new location standard "omlox" from the PROFIBUS Nutzerorganisation e.V.. The presentation session was concluded by INFORM GmbH. Matthias Wurst showed how tracking and telematics data of truck transports can optimize the internal material flow already from the unloading ramp.
The informative congress day was rounded off with the topic area "Changed working environments". Here, too, the current influence of the pandemic could not be ignored. Thus, Dr.-Ing. Sascha Feldhorst as Managing Director and one of the founders of MotionMiners from Dortmund showed the special difficulties and challenges that a young start-up faces in these special times. He made the comparison of the nutshell in the storm that a start-up has to cope with.
The informative congress day was rounded off with the topic area "Changed working environments". Here, too, the current influence of the pandemic could not be ignored. Dr.-Ing. Sascha Feldhorst, Managing Director and one of the founders of MotionMiners from Dortmund, showed the special difficulties and challenges that a young start-up faces in these special times. In doing so, he draws the comparison of the nutshell in the storm that a start-up has to cope with.
In a joint presentation, Christopher Kirsch from Beumer Group and Mathias Thomas from Dr. Thomas + Partner reported on their experiences at the beginning of the pandemic. Flights were cancelled, travel bans were imposed - this meant that on-site commissioning and maintenance of conveyor systems was no longer possible in the usual way. So they used augmented reality data glasses for this purpose. The technology, which was implemented at the end of 2019, thus found its use earlier than expected.
Finally, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Martin Schmauder from the Institute for Technical Logistics and Work Systems at the Technical University of Dresden presented the current state of research on digital ergonomics in manual logistics processes. He confirmed the unanimous consensus on the conference question: Automation is increasing in intralogistics. But humans are far from being written off! And that is a good thing!
At the end of the day, Professor Fottner was already able to announce the date for the Material Flow Congress 2022. The 30th anniversary is to take place from March 30, 2022 to April 01, 2022. The organizers hope to welcome the participants then again in the usual form at the Technical University of Munich in Garching with exciting lectures, interesting discussions and the personal live exchange.