Johan Peter Paludan, one of the experts who contributed to the Delphi study, sees a trend towards a fully networked world and full digitization, in which logistics would play a key role. The “service society” would develop into a “self-service society” and home shopping would be all about the best logistics. RFID technology would not only be used to consistently track goods, but would find its way into more and more areas of everyday life, in a “wonderful” new world of logistics.

For Frank Appel, the logistics sector has been one of the winners from globalization. He expects Asia, in particular, to benefit from growth in the future, and feels that, for DHL, “Our best business opportunities lie in India and China.” He also believes that the responsibilities of logistics specialists will continue to develop beyond simply shipping from A to B. The logistics sector is already taking on such important supply chain responsibilities as assembling individual manufactured parts within automobile production.

Frank sees the trend as being mainly towards achieving maximum simplification. He used the Packstation, DHL’s parcel machine used to send and collect parcels, as an example. In future it would work with voice recognition and make customers’ lives even easier.

The Delphi Dialog 2020 will continue throughout the year, with more sessions planned in London, Brussels, Shanghai, Munich and Hamburg, covering a variety of topics.