Deutsche Post DHL has recognised its most innovative customers and employees along with academicsand scientists with this year’s Innovation Awards presented at a ceremony last night.
Held for the second time, the DHL Innovation Awards, under this year’s slogan of “GrowingIdeas”, were presented at the DHL Innovation Center in Troisdorf near Bonn. The awards, with cashprizes totalling €10,000, closed the DHL Innovation Day, which attracted some 250 customers andpartners.
Airbus was named the “most innovative customer” this year for the use of DHL as LeadTransport Provider for its inbound supply chain to European locations. Since early 2009, Airbus hasbeen using the Control Tower concept under which DHL manages all transports, ensures a high levelof data transparency for all involved parties and reduces supply chain costs. Pascal Eymery, Airbusvice president supply chain and logistics, said the Control Tower concept had simplified operationsfor the aviation company. The main challenge had been to get all parties to cooperate in the newprocedure, he commented.
The award for the “most innovative junior scientist”, with a cash prize of €5,000, waspresented to Adam Crossno, founder of OnAsset Intelligence Inc, Texas, for developing FlightSafe, aholistic solution for tracking and tracing air freight that is currently being tested by DHL onintercontinental flights for high-value items. The product enables shipment status data to berecorded during a flight and then transmitted to the tracking system to restore shipment visibilityonce the flight has arrived at its destination and radio transmission is again legally permitted.FlightSafe is the first tracking device that can be used aboard aircraft and thus closes ‘a missinglink’ in the surveillance of cargo, Deutsche Post DHL noted.
Two employee teams gained awards this year. DHL Finland was recognised for developing newenvironmentally friendly loading units. The stackable plastic pallets made from recycled materialsuse the full truck capacity, resulting in improved utilisation and a 25% increase in the truck’sshipping weight and volume. DHL is currently testing the system in a pilot project in Scandinavia.A Deutsche Post mail team won an award for their video coding tunnel that facilitates the exchangeof codes among several mail centres and improves the utilisation of video-coding employees in theprocess.
Special awards were given to several young researchers given the task of designing ‘theperfect parcel packaging’. The winning team, Christian Wassermann of Wietmarschen and Sven Krummenof Lingen, copied from nature with a cardboard protection based on a diatom (a kind of plankton)capable of bearing extreme weights. Second place was awarded to an inner-cushioning system, and thetwo third-place awards were presented to cut-to-size shipping cartons and a telescope package witha dimpled air tube.
The prize for the “most innovative senior scientist” for 2009 was presented to Prof. Dr. Dr.h.c. Hans-Christian Pfohl of the Technical University of Darmstadt for his “Logbook” project, acomprehensive logistics compendium.
