In May, the next edition of the Polish Logistics Congress LOGISTICS 2016 took place – an event serving as a platform for knowledge exchange, presentation of trends, current concepts, and the latest logistics projects. The slogan of this year’s Congress was “Logistics in the digital world.” It was intended to draw attention to the growing importance of innovative technology development for logistics. Companies in our industry collect vast amounts of diverse data, e.g., from temperature sensors, GPS modules, mobile devices, detailed reports, and analyses. Are logistics companies today already able to fully utilize the potential that this data carries?
Stanisław Krzyżaniak, Deputy Director for Research at the Institute of Logistics and Warehousing in Poznań: I think it is not only logistics companies that are unable to properly utilize the vast amount of data that is technically possible to acquire, store, and share today. This also applies to every network user who encounters unprecedented amounts of data and information. They probably just overwhelm us. Let us also remember that data is only the starting point for information. Today, there is increasing talk of “Data science,” which is the science of using data: how to filter it, separate relevant data from “information noise,” and finally, how to process it into a useful form. And how to do it quickly, often almost in real-time. From the point of view of broadly understood logistics (not just logistics companies), it is also important to reasonably define the scope and number of collected data. Not everything that can be acquired is useful later, and yet it burdens the IT systems responsible for processing this data. To sum up, I will repeat: in my opinion, logistics companies are not yet ready to fully utilize the potential resulting from the collected data. But they are aware of this potential. One just needs to wisely limit the temptations arising from technical possibilities and design systems for collecting and processing useful data.