The Logistics Tribe

Today we are talking about supply chain challenges in the automotive industry. Our guest is Robert Cameron who heads up the production, logistics and aftermarket department at the VDA, the German Automotive Industry Association. Our host, Marco Prüglmeier, sat down with Robert at the recent Trends in Automotive Logistics (TAL) Conference in Pilsen, Czech Republic and talked about the following top...

In today's episode we explore the possibility to increase truck driver satisfaction and boost truck utilization with better planning tools and smarter algorithms. Our guest today is Mark Farkas, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of AI Fleet, a vertically integrated technology enabled trucking company that was founded in Austin, TX in 2020. Together with our host Jonah McIntire, Mark discusse...

Countless attempts have been made in the last decade to leverage cutting edge technology to give companies the transportation and supply chain visibility that they need to anticipate disruptions, proactively manage risks and boost supply chain resilience. Literally hundreds of millions of funding has been poured into tech stacks that promised to finally deliver the visibility and control that ever...

Tom Bianculli, Chief Technology Officer of Zebra Tecnologies sat down with our host Marco Prüglmeier at the recent Trends in Automotive Logistics Conference (TAL) in Pilsen, Czech Republic to discuss the following topics: - Zebra Technologies' journey beyond the scope of scanning devices - Why the company has completed 8 acquisitions in the last 4 years - Zebra's venture investments - The synergie...

It's hard to find Shippers that didn't get burnt by skyrocketing freight rates in the last 3 years. And high freight rate volatility is likely here to stay. The US-based startup ZenHedge is working on a fintech-based insurance solution that promises to offer peace of mind by protecting shippers from the financial impact of tender rejection, freight rate volatility, and other supply chain disruptio...

Today's guest on The Logistics Tribe is Roman Žák. Roman is one of the founders of Aimtec. Aimtec helps companies on their digital transformation journeys. They combine a very deep consulting expertise in manufacturing and logistics with a unique approach to implementing software solutions. And what’s fascinating about Aimtec is that they have been around since 1996. A time when digital transforma...

Radu Palamariu from Alcott Global and Knut Alicke from McKinsey are two influential thinkers on the topic of supply chain leadership. In this episode of The Logistics Tribe, Radu, Knut and our host Boris Felgendreher explore how the last few years in particular have elevated the function of supply chain inside many organizations around the world. But how can supply chain leaders actually capitaliz...

Today's guest on The Logistics Tribe is Ken Adamo, Chief of Analytics at DAT. DAT operates the largest truckload freight marketplace in North America. Ken is responsible for DAT iQ, DATs data science team and its pricing database for shippers, 3PLs, trucking operators and freight brokers. Ken is one of the leading experts in data analytics in the logistics industry, so we had to pair him up with o...

Today’s guest on The Logistics Tribe Podcast is Prof. Roland Siegwart. Roland is director of the Autonomous Systems Lab in Switzerland, director of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich and a world-renown robotics expert. He is one of the pioneers in the field of autonomous mobile robots, which are quickly spreading throughout warehouses and logistics operations around th...

Hermann Ude is the former CEO of DHL Freight and DHL Global Forwarding, a former corporate board member of Deutsche Post and now sits on a number of supervisory boards, including his role as chairman of the supervisory board at Transporeon. Hermann has a strong interested in the impact the logistics industry has on the environment and on climate change in particular. He holds many key insights int...

Today we have a very special episode for you. It’s different because we typically bring you conversations between a host and one, sometimes two guests that are 45 minutes or so in length. Today’s episode is a deep dive into one very specific topic with two people who have very deep domain expertise in this field. And this episode is 2 hours and 45 minutes long. The idea here is to really take the...

Today's guest on The Logistics Tribe is Ajesh Kapoor. Ajesh is the founder and CEO of SemiCab. Semicab is a US-based logtech startup that is bringing multi-enterprise collaboration to the world of truck transportation. Semicab offers tech-enabled services and connects shippers and carriers on a collaborative transportation platform. Ajesh took our host Boris Felgendreher on a deep dive tour on how...

Today we will take a look at what Google, in particular Google Cloud, is up to when it comes to Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Google Cloud has been active in this space for a couple of years now and it’s starting to become clear now why it may actually be a great match. Our guest today is Hans Thalbauer who has a rich history in Supply Chain tech, and is now the Managing Director of Googl...

In today's episode we discuss a timely topic that is on the minds of many of our listeners: Is now actually the right time to start working for a logistics tech startup? Our guests today are Frederic Krahforst and Jonah McIntire. Frederic is the Co-Founder and CEO of the logtech startup TradeLink and Jonah has founded and successfully sold two logtech startups and is currently working for Transpor...

We invited two prominent journalists back onto the show who cover the exciting fields of logistics, supply chain, logtech and e-commerce. Emma Cosgrove writes about logistics with a focus on e-commerce for Business Insider and Eric Johnson is Senior Editor for Technology at The Journal of Commerce where he leads coverage and analysis of technology's impact on global logistics and trade. Our host B...

Modern Supply Chain Management would be impossible without the powerful technologies that enable it. Our guest on today's episode of The Logistics Tribe is John Atherton, Global Lead for Supply Chain & Operations at the Accenture Amazon Web Services Business Group, a joint venture between Accenture and AWS. Together with our host Boris Felgendreher, John talks about the following topics: - John an...

What are the downstream consequences of the lockdowns in China for global logistics and supply chain management? That's what we discuss in this episode of The Logistics Tribe with Bjorn Vang Jensen. Bjorn is a well-known industry figure and a veteran of the global logistics business. He has seen the world of supply chains from many different angles. From the ocean carrier perspective, from the 3PL...

The demand for logistics robots is exploding and so are the choices of different types of robots from different vendors. In this episode of The Logistics Tribe we discuss how to choose the right robots for your specific needs and how to get them up in running in your logistics operations quickly. Our guest today is Victor Splittgerber, the founder and CEO of WAKU Robotics. Victor and his team have...

Today we have Joachim Schaut from DB Schenker on the program to talk about how the logistics provider is helping to digitally transform the supply chains of its customers. Joachim leads the company’s Intercontinental Supply Chain Solutions. That’s an area where DB Schenker is making some big technology plays and where they have built partnerships with some state-of-the-art technology vendors to tr...

The Logistics Tribe met Steffen Bersch, the CEO of SSI Schäfer, at the recent International Intralogistics and Forklift Truck of the Year (IFOY) Test Days. SSI Schäfer is a big global player in the area of modular warehousing and logistics solutions. The company was founded in Germany in 1937 and today operates across six continents with more than 10,500 employees. Steffen was also recently electe...

Ho do you orchestrate your intralogistics operations when you have AGVs and AMRs from different vendors, traditional forklifts, conveyor belts and people working side-by-side in your warehouse and production facilities? Our guest today is Wolfgang Hackenberg, one of the founders of Synaos, a startup based in Germany that is building a hardware-agnostic intralogistics management platform. Together...

Today we will take a deep dive into the world of route planning and route optimization. Our guest Florian Merget is co-founder of Greenplan, a startup that was recently spun out of DHL. Greenplan’s algorithm promises to do a better job at planning and optimizing routes for last mile, road freight and even field service management. Together with our host Boris Felgendreher, Florian talked about the...

In today's episode we will take a deep dive into the topic of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). SLAM is a method used for autonomous vehicles such as AMRs in logistics for example that lets you build a map and localize your vehicles in that map at the same time. SLAM algorithms allow vehicles to map out unknown environments. It’s one of those things we should all know about in more det...

Steve Viscelli is a political sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania where he studies freight transportation and autonomous trucks. He's also the author of the book "The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream" in which he explains how long-haul trucking went from being one of the best blue-collar jobs in the US to one of the toughest. His current book project "Driverless? A...

Supply Chain Visibility is an evergreen topic in the industry. But it feels like after so many years, there are still a lot more questions than answers about what visibility you actually need to run a global supply chain and how best to achieve it. The last couple of years have made that painfully obvious. Today's guest has been trying to tackle the issue from various angles for many years. Tobias...