Siemens Postal, Parcel & Airport Logistics (SPPAL) and its subsidiary AXIT have signed an acquisition of LOCOM, expanding their consulting and IT services market position within the logistics sector.
Based in Karlsruhe, LOCOM is successfully engaged in the market for logistics consulting and innovative planning, simulation and optimisation software. LOCOM is regarded as a trailblazer and one of the leading companies in its field of business.
Among the customers are leading German companies and logistics service providers in Europe. The transaction was completed on 7 June 2018. The companies have concluded a non-disclosure agreement about the financial details.
SSPAL CEO Michael Reichle says: “After the acquisition of AXIT in 2015, this is a further, consistent step toward a strategic expansion of our portfolio. In this way, we are strengthening our market position in the important growth field of digitalisation in logistics.
“We are planning to bundle the AXIT and LOCOM activities into one company in the new fiscal year. In conjunction with the SPPAL expertise we see tremendous potential for our customers.”
With its own software portfolio, SPPAL already offers outstanding digital solutions for intralogistics in the postal, parcel and airport market, whether it involves optimising the operations of parcel centers with real data on a daily basis or improving the flow of goods at airports.
In combination with the Cloud-based logistics platform AX4 from AXIT, customers also benefit from the global control of their logistics networks. Thus, companies can manage their supply chains more easily, more transparently, and more reliably.
The competencies of LOCOM, especially its sophisticated planning and optimisation algorithms and subsequent simulation, strengthen and supplement the entire software portfolio up to a holistic supply chain management system.
Thus, in the future, customers will be able to use the already validated and consolidated data from the transport management of the AX4 logistics platform for planning and simulation processes at the push of a button.
In this way, they can flexibly optimise their supply chains and respond very quickly and with more agility to changing boundary conditions, for example. Whereas the logistics industry is still essentially relying on isolated silo solutions, Siemens customers benefit from the implementation of a continuous optimisation and control process from a single source along the entire logistics chain.
On one hand, this includes strategic and tactical planning with the help of data analysis, simulation and visualisation of processes as well as optimisation recommendations.
On the other hand, the optimised shipments are handled via a digital platform: All of the participants are integrated, the information and shipment management is automated. The resulting end-to-end visibility creates a high degree of efficiency and security for the connected companies.
As a supplement to this, the combination of many years of cross-industry consulting competency and software solutions represents considerable added value for the customer, for example, in regard to working out a digitalisation strategy and developing new IT-based service offers.
AXIT CEO Holger Schmitt emphasises: “Customers from industry, trade and logistics service providers benefit considerably from the linking of the solutions from AXIT and LOCOM: The combination of planning, optimisation, digitalised shipment management and end-to-end transparency leads to a clear boost in efficiency, security, reliability and success in supply chain management.”
LOCOM founder and CEO Volker Klohr adds: “With Siemens as a well-known brand around the world, this is the right way for LOCOM to offer our portfolio and our competencies more intensively in international markets in the future. In this way, we can benefit even more from the global growth in the digitalisation field.”