AI application areas in logistics: Solution to the shortage of skilled workers?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is finding its way into all areas of logistics. It is changing the logistics industry. Read about specific fields of application and the solutions it can already offer in the fight against the shortage of skilled labour.
AI in all application areas of transport and logistics
Supply chains must be controllable and transparent. AI contributes to this. It is changing workplaces and the way people work together in transport and warehouses. Autonomous vehicles and automated warehouse systems are already working in demarcated areas, and AI-controlled robots are unstoppable in material flow and order picking. In the future, humans and machines will work side by side. AI will help where work is unpleasant, risky or boring. The omnipresent driver is the shortage of skilled labour. At transport logistic in Munich, the fields of application of artificial intelligence will therefore once again be a top topic.
AI is changing logistics tasks and jobs
The European Parliament defines artificial intelligence as “the ability of a machine to imitate human abilities such as logical thinking, learning, planning and creativity”. Technical systems can perceive their environment, deal with it and solve problems. The computer receives data, processes it and reacts in a targeted manner. The system is able to adapt its behaviour on the basis of previous experience.
AI can fundamentally change many jobs in logistics.
AI works in a similar way to the human brain, which has around 100 billion nerve cells, known as neurons, for this purpose. They are networked with each other. When stimuli trigger signals, these are passed from cell to cell and supplemented. This enables humans to learn, draw conclusions and think abstractly. AI relies on artificial neurons that it trains with algorithms.
The advantages: AI leads to automated, highly flexible logistics
Raoul Wintjes, Head of International Road Freight Transport and Digitalisation at the German Freight Forwarding and Logistics Association (DSLV), made an appeal to the industry at an AI symposium organised by the trade journal trans aktuell: “Freight forwarders should embrace the new technologies. A number of applications provide many benefits as efficiency drivers, for improving quality and for implementing process innovations or new business models.”
AI means more than just process optimisation for the logistics industry. It can not only save time and costs, but also make processes safer and conserve resources. In times of climate change and a shortage of skilled labour, highly automated and flexible logistics reduces the burden on the environment and people.
Top researchers for AI in planning and logistics
The Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Dortmund focuses on the research and development of powerful, reliable and resource-efficient applications of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). The Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML in Dortmund is involved and is engaged in the interdisciplinary research area “Planning & Logistics”.Here, top researchers are investigating how logistics, as an “all-pervasive principle of the purposeful movement of things”, can make life more convenient, easier and safer. Not just for logisticians, but for everyone, because logistics affects everyone.
Transport and logistics offer many applications for AI
It's not just the volumes that are increasing with fewer and fewer personnel. The requirements for transparency and safety are also increasing. AI can already support people with simple, recurring tasks, but also with complex decisions.AI helps people with recording, analysing, sorting and planning. It can recognise, lift, navigate and much more. More and more logistics applications, from warehouses to fleets, are becoming autonomous. This frees up urgently needed skilled labour in logistics.
- Order entry: AI is already using large language models and deep learning algorithms to create structured data records and supplement missing information.
- Route planning: Systems are becoming digital platforms on which AI algorithms support processes with many parameters and handle transports in a highly automated manner. Flow of goods: AI controls driverless transport systems (AGVs), autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), automated warehouse systems and much more.
- Order picking: AI helps with the lifting, sorting and packing of goods in numerous applications, from assistance systems for industrial trucks to gripper robots.
- Predictive maintenance: recognising anomalies at an early stage and avoiding unplanned downtime—from the smallest industrial truck to the entire logistics system.
AI as a driver for autonomous driving
Another field of application for artificial intelligence is autonomous driving. For years, manufacturers have been working on assistance and control systems to make autonomous vehicles ready for series production. This would be unthinkable without AI. The systems can detect and analyse their surroundings.In doing so, they weigh up risks and traffic rules. In the long term, this can simplify work at the wheel.
In April 2024, MAN will be the first commercial vehicle manufacturer to send an autonomously driving truck onto the A9 motorway between Allershausen and Fürholzen. Hub-to-hub projects in customer applications are to follow from 2025. Towards the end of the decade, MAN will take the next development step towards series production of the autonomous truck. Daimler Trucks wants to enable highly automated driving with autonomous trucks by the end of the decade.
“However, truck drivers will remain an integral part of supply chains for a long time to come," explains Wolfgang Inninger, Head of the Transport, Mobility and Environment Project Centre at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML. Autonomous driving is not yet a solution to the increasing shortage of lorry drivers.
AI is a question of control
The EU's AI law has been in force since August 2024 and must be transposed into national law within the next two years. It aims to ensure that AI systems are as transparent, comprehensible, non-discriminatory and environmentally friendly as possible. The most important aspect here is that AI must be controlled by people and not just by other technologies.
The first companies are already developing guidelines for dealing with a technology that has developed rapidly over the past two decades and continues to evolve just as quickly. This does not only bring advantages, warns Kenza Ait Si Abbou, Member of the Executive Board and CTO at Fiege:
“Artificial intelligence has the potential to radically change our society. In addition to the positive effects, the new technologies also harbour risks that we must not ignore.It is therefore up to us to utilise AI in the intended areas of activity and only for the benefit of our employees, our customers and partners as well as all stakeholders.”
The company wants to fulfil this responsibility. Fiege's five AI guidelines are based on the EU Artificial Intelligence Act and focus on explainability, transparency, fairness, data protection and robustness.It is one of the first logistics companies to use guidelines to ensure a responsible and ethical approach to AI technologies within the company.
Further information
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