Julia Harbarth takes third place in the Young Professionals' Award Logistics 2023
Julia Harbarth, a Bachelor of Business Administration student at KLU, came third in the final of the Young Professionals' Award Logistics (YPAL) 2023. She was awarded for her thesis on "The profitability of anticipatory shipping in e-commerce companies". Around 100 viewers and an expert jury voted Lara Nehrke from Universität Hamburg into first place and Yann Kinkel from Hamburg University of Technology into second place in the final.
"I am very happy for Julia. She has written an excellent thesis and it was a pleasure to work with her," says Prof. Mirjam Meier, who supervised the thesis. The thesis has already been recognized by KLU as the best bachelor thesis of its year. "The nomination and third place in the YPAL Award shows that her work is also very well received by practitioners in supply chain management."
Faster delivery times in e-commerce
Julia Harbarth's bachelor's thesis deals with the challenges faced by e-commerce companies in providing their customers with ever faster delivery times. "Large companies such as Amazon use speculative shipping, known as anticipatory shipping," explains Julia. "Parcels are sent out before the order is placed. The aim is to drastically reduce delivery times and increase customer satisfaction." To make the system work, customer data is collected, purchase patterns are identified and online interactions are tracked. The parcel is then temporarily stored regionally near the customer and only receives its final delivery address when the actual order arrives.
"I specifically investigated whether 'anticipatory shipping' is profitable for e-commerce companies compared to normal, order-based shipping," says Julia Harbarth. "To do this, I simulated speculative shipping using a mathematical model to find out how profitable the implementation is from a business perspective." The results are clear: regular shipping saves 15 percent of operating costs compared to anticipatory shipping with optimal delivery quantities, but anticipatory shipping can reduce the waiting time for customers by 44 percent. "Speculative shipping is definitely a major challenge for companies, but it also has a lot of potential for innovation, savings and increased customer focus," says Julia Harbarth.
Young Professionals‘ Award Logistics
A total of €2,500 in prize money was awarded for first to third place. With the YPAL Award, the Hamburg Logistics Initiative recognizes outstanding scientific contributions by young experts in the field of logistics every year. The prize was awarded for the twelfth time this year. In 2021, the prize last went to KLU - Ph.D. candidate Sandra Rudeloff impressed the jury and audience at the time.
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