Schlüsselwort: contract logistics

If they want to stay competitive and to benefit from the growth of the logistics service market contract logistics providers have to improve their capabilities to develop new service solutions in an efficient way. In this context innovative technologies are not only an important lever to realize market potential but also strategic drivers of change. The technology trends which can be identified from today’s perspective will lead to new scenarios for value creation and will force the market actors to adapt to upcoming market conditions. Hence, companies which are able to forecast the potential of upcoming technologies and to use them to overcome their challenges and to provide innovative service concepts to their customers will gain an important advantage above their competitors. Therefore the focus of this dissertation is put on the development of a holistic and context-related management approach for the establishment of a technology-oriented service engineering at contract logistics providers. The goal is to provide support for the decision makers to create the structures and processes needed for an efficient, systematic and technology-oriented service design. According to the research design, the methodical approach is structured in five phases. The specification of the research topics, the analysis and interpretation of the problem-related theories and the design of an appropriate conceptual framework is based on systematic literature reviews. For the following analysis and description of the practical application context with direct involvement of business experts a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods is used (explorative factor analysis, regression analysis, exploratory data analysis, group discussion and expert interviews. The utilization of these methods allows to describe the main success factors of a technology-oriented service engineering, the main challenges of the companies and hands-on measures to tackle them. The findings are used for the conceptual elaboration of the new management approach in course of an abductive research step. The holistic approach is structured in form of a design model which visualizes all relevant fields of action. On top level the model differentiates between the cultural and strategic foundation on the one hand and the market- and technology-oriented development process on the other. The technology management function is regarded as support function for the actual service design process. All described measures and tools are conceptualized and adopted with respect to specified success criteria. After its development the management approach is critically reviewed and evaluated in coordination with experts from contracts logistics companies. In summary the dissertation, which is in first line dedicated to practitioners and managers of contract logistics companies, provides an practice-oriented approach, an comprehensive overview of the relevant fields of management and points out important, unanswered questions which can be taken as motivation for further research activities.