(Berlin/Essen, May 16, 2012) Two employees in Sweden have received the first European Innovation Award from DB Schenker Logistics for a game they developed aimed at combating everyday discrimination. Second place was awarded to a marketing toolbox, and a special electronic document management system for freight forwarding came in third. A panel of judges composed of managers from DB Schenker selected the winners by secret ballot out of the final top ten award-worthy entries. Employees from over 30 European national companies took part in the competition, which was launched by the Land Transport division. Twenty-eight innovations were nominated, some by customers, and the top ten were selected for the final round.
“As part of our innovation management activities, we were looking for ideas that further strengthen our network and can be applied to other areas as well,” explained Karl Nutzinger, Member of the Board of Management of Schenker AG responsible for Land Transport, in his speech at the award ceremony at the Zeche Zollverein in Essen. “Many of the ideas developed at DB Schenker are now the industry standard. We target innovations which allow us to stand out from the competition and also benefit our customers. At the same time, we want to show that sensible changes to our network processes are an important part of our corporate culture.”
The Innovation Award was introduced last year by the European management team as a new element of innovation management. Ulla Ahrlin and Yvonne Prokopek came up with the idea of playfully drawing attention to everyday discrimination at work. Their idea, for which they were awarded EUR 15,000, has already been implemented at DB Schenker Logistics’ Swedish national company. Thorsten Meffert was awarded EUR 10,000 for his marketing toolbox, which is already being used as a sales tool at the German organization. Radim Chval received an award of EUR 5,000 for the document management system he developed, which has been successfully utilized at the Austrian national company.
Executives from all over Europe took part in the presentation of the ten best innovative ideas to evaluate how solutions that had proven themselves in other countries could be applied across Europe. The proposals submitted included telematics solutions for temperature-controlled transports and for monitoring swap bodies, as well as payment solutions for online purchases, the Raubox, which has already been given the European Packing Award, and a new trainee selection procedure.
Bernd Weiler
Spokesperson, Transportation and Logistics / International Tel.: +49 (0) 30 297-54020
Fax +49 (0) 30 297-54029
presse@dbschenker.com
www.dbschenker.com
SOURCE: Submittd by Schenker
