What’s Hot in Logistics at DB Schenker

DB Schenker’s relationship with Volocopter began with an ordinary logistics job: moving equipment and prototypes to exhibitions and conferences. As the team learned more about its customer, a different conversation emerged. Could a company developing flying vehicles help solve a freight problem? Could the logistics provider help that startup understand what a workable cargo service would require?

For Erik Wirsing, that progression captures much of the appeal of innovation. New possibilities often appear through existing relationships, provided someone is curious enough to notice them. In this episode of Innovation Rockstars, DB Schenker’s Vice President of Global Innovation joins Dr. Christian Mühlroth to discuss a sector under pressure from pandemic disruption and technological change. His account combines enthusiasm for ambitious technology with a practical discipline: find the customer problem, test the fit and make the knowledge useful to colleagues who have to run the business.

When the operating assumptions stop working

Wirsing describes the pandemic as a challenge to promises logistics providers had made for years. Customers could rely on global transport and reduce their own storage. Then disrupted transport networks made that arrangement much harder to sustain.

Customers holding on to shipping containers as temporary warehouses added to an already difficult capacity situation. Grounded passenger aircraft also removed freight capacity. DB Schenker responded with measures including chartered passenger aircraft adapted to carry cargo.

The interview captures those pressures at the time, rather than offering a description of today’s freight market. Its enduring lesson concerns how innovation teams work under constraint. A promising idea needs to meet an operating requirement, often while service commitments remain in force. Partners, available assets and alternative business arrangements all become part of the search.

Wirsing does not suggest that one workaround solved the disruption. The problem crossed transport modes, customer industries and locations. That complexity made collaboration necessary and sharpened the need to choose where to focus.

Give exploration a direction

For Wirsing, a shortage of ideas is hardly the biggest obstacle. The challenge is choosing among too many possibilities.

DB Schenker’s approach, as he describes it, combines a trend radar with input from sales colleagues, customers, startups, R&D projects and funding opportunities. The innovation team develops theses around areas worth exploring and challenges those assumptions with people who understand the business.

“We are a small team and we can't think of and know everything”

The point of that structure is to direct attention. A startup might become a supplier, support a different business model or offer a reason to consider investment. Those are distinct possibilities, and each needs investigation.

Wirsing is equally clear about stopping. An interesting technology can consume time without creating value for the company. Fast feedback helps teams discover that before the work absorbs more resources. Exploration earns its place by improving understanding, including when the answer is to discontinue an idea.

Keep the process usable

The discipline Wirsing advocates leaves room for pragmatism. He has seen innovation processes that look impressive in presentations but become too complicated for people to adopt.

His preference is to give the right colleagues an opportunity to meet, enough freedom and resources to investigate, and a clear occasion to return with findings. A discussion of results or milestones can keep work moving without burying it in administration.

Senior support still matters. A team may test something locally, but introducing and scaling it across a company requires people beyond the innovation function to engage. Wirsing explicitly includes the board in that internal network.

For R&D leaders, the useful question is whether a process helps people make the next decision. If it mostly creates paperwork, it risks taking attention away from the uncertainty the team was supposed to investigate.

Let operational knowledge shape the partnership

The Volocopter story illustrates how a logistics company can contribute more than funding. Wirsing describes sharing DB Schenker’s operational requirements and processes as the companies explored cargo drones.

At the time of the conversation, certification and integration remained open questions. The intended service had to fit transport operations, customer demand and the wider regulatory framework. Wirsing’s enthusiasm should therefore be read as an account of an innovation effort, rather than proof of an established commercial service.

The cultural differences were part of the work too. He compares the established logistics business with a slower-moving elephant alongside a fast startup. Connecting the right people and being transparent helped the two sides learn from each other.

That makes the original logistics assignment important. The relationship gave DB Schenker a closer view of the technology, while the startup gained access to practical freight knowledge. The opportunity developed through that exchange, rather than arriving as a fully formed investment thesis.

Find the moment when someone sees the value

Asked for a personal Innovation Rockstar moment, Wirsing recalls introducing scanners for truck drivers. The memorable part was convincing drivers of the benefit and seeing them recognise how the equipment could make their work easier.

He also remembers a customer approaching him after a conference presentation about new transport technology. The customer worked in roofing and brought ideas that Wirsing could imagine exploring. A discussion outside the expected innovation circle opened another possible avenue.

“Always being on the lookout for new opportunities.”

These examples bring his broad enthusiasm back to everyday contact. Technology becomes meaningful when someone can connect it to a real task, constraint or opportunity. For Wirsing, bringing new knowledge to the right people is central to the innovation role. The practical test is whether that knowledge helps a colleague or customer see something useful they could do next.