Magic moments in the historic Erich Klausener Hall of the German Transport Ministry in Berlin: on Tuesday evening, 170 guests of honour from politics, academia, industry and the media celebrated the official induction of the newly selected members into the logistics pantheon with standing ovations.
The glass-and-metal certificate was presented by the laudatory speakers of the evening, Dorothee Bär, Parliamentary State Secretary and Member of the German Bundestag Parliament, Hans-Otto Schrader, CEO of the Otto Group, Prof. Dr. Katja Windt, President of Jacobs University Bremen, Hall of Fame member Detthold Aden, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolfgang Kersten, Director of the Institute of Business Logistics and General Management at the TU Hamburg-Harburg, the Executive Director of the Federal Central Cooperative for Road Transport (SVG), Werner Gockeln, and Dr. Jochen Köckler, member of the Board of Deutsche Messe AG. With their moving words of tribute, they honoured the achievements of the logistics pioneers and took the audience on a journey in time through the some of the defining moments of logistics history.
The Logistics Hall of Fame dedicated the 2016 vote to the “Historic Milestones of Logistics” in order to document outstanding achievements in logistics recorded before the year 2000. The new inductees include Franz von Taxis and Johann Baptista von Taxis, founders of the international postal system, Henry Ford and Ransom Eli Olds, inventors of conveyor belt production, James E. Casey, inventor of parcel services and founder of UPS, Norman Joseph Woodland, George Laurer and Bernard Silver, the inventors of the barcode, Lothar Raucamp, fighter for the cooperative idea in logistics and founder of Kravag, Gerhard Schäfer, initiator of the system concept and pioneer of storage logistics, Horst Mosolf, pioneer of vehicle logistics and inventor of specialised automotive transport, founder and CEO of Fedex Frederick W. Smith as well as Prof. Dr. Peer Witten as a pioneer of Internet trading and modern logistics.
The 13 new members have been voted out of 31 candidates by an international expert jury.
The initiative is supported by the Federal Ministry of Transport as well as the relevant sector associations, media and companies, including the Port of Duisburg (duisport), Gebrüder Weiss, logistics insurer Kravag, the Fahrzeugwerk Bernard Krone company, intralogistics provider Still, the Federal Central Cooperative for Road Transport (SVG) and the TimoCom freight exchange.
The Hall can be accessed free of charge at any time at www.logisticshalloffame.net and features information and photos on logistics milestones and the people behind them.
