Digitalization of Business Logistics Activities and Future Directions

Currently we are facing the last industrial revolution, industry 4.0, which enables communication between humans as well as machines in Cyber-Physical-Systems (CPS). The concept industry 4.0 was first brought up in Germany. With the promises of the concept and increasing demand in cost effectiveness, flexibility, and sustainability, industry 4.0 has drawn considerable interest globally. The industry 4.0 era will lead to breakthrough chances in the business world. As the technologies of this era enable ubiquitous presence and real time information about each single piece of a process, it has been used in many firms in developed countries for some time. It is apparent that this new era will cause significant changes in our lives. Concepts of this new era such as cyber physical systems and internet of things have already gained considerable interest. Technologies that will be used widespread in the new future offer big opportunities for cost reduction and assessment of operations. Thus, the emerging developments in technology are closely followed especially by the logistics sector. Industry 4.0 involves numerous technologies and related paradigms (Thames & Schaefer, 2016). In this chapter, after a brief description of digitalization and industry 4.0, some main industry 4.0 technologies used in the logistics sector will be explained. Consequently, the advantages and disadvantages, and the possible opportunities and threats for the logistics sector will be discussed. Finally the current situation of logistics firms all over the world and specifically in Turkey will be discussed.