House of Logistics and Mobility

The new hub of the region

The emergence of the House of Logistics and Mobility (HOLM), situated between the airport and Frankfurter Kreuz, is transforming FranfkurtRhineMain into a world-class logistics center.

Frankfurt Airport. Gateway Gardens. The flowery name still conceals a huge area of derelict land. Hoarding, demarcated building land and a few deserted apartments. Only the freshly tarmaced roads give any indication that the future is to be built here. At one time 2,500 US soldiers and their families lived here. There was a movie theater and a church, an elementary and a middle school, Coca Cola and barbecues. That is all history. Gateway Gardens now stands for a vision. By 2016 an urban neighborhood for over 10,000 people is to be built close to the airport, a center for the future. Featuring offices and hotels, cafés and restaurants – and the House of Logistics and Mobility (HOLM).

A poster on one of the surviving ochre barracks and a sign reading second floor points the way to the future. This is home to the HOLM project office, to be more precise the Director, Prof. Stefan Walter, the Head of Marketing Dr. Jack Thoms and their 12 employees. In five apartments that have been turned into a single refurbished, state-of-the-art office. There is no stopping the young academics-come managers, directors of the Supply Chain Management Institute (SMI) at the European Business School (EBS), talking, almost waxing lyrical about “their” project. “First the House of Finance and now the House of Logistics and Mobility“, says Professor Walter. “The region is focusing on its strengths.” The HOLM is intended to become a Silicon Valley for logistics, a spearheading research, education and knowledge transfer center that will be unique in the world.

The framework for such an ambitious project could scarcely be better. FrankfurtRhineMain is a European hub, competing directly with Dubai and Singapore. The sector employs 245,000 people in the region. Four of the five largest regional employers are in the business. With the airport, the Frankfurter Kreuz intersection and Frankfurt’s main station FrankfurtRhineMain is one of the most easily reachable regions in Europe. Its economic clout is enhanced by academic expertise – at the University of Frankfurt, the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt Technical University and the European Business School (EBS) in Wiesbaden, the founding universities of HOLM. Professor Hans-Christian Pfohl, the co-founder of logistics management in Germany, no less, teaches in Darmstadt. And the Supply Chain Management Institute (SMI) at the EBS, which is headed by the President of the university Prof. Christopher Jahns, is one of the world’s leading purchasing, logistics, and supply chain management institutes.

Walter and Thoms are fascinated by the idea of creating a closely networked, integrated cluster from the geographical proximity of companies and universities. After all, only a cluster with a capable management team is going to make all those in it successful. Stefan Walter likes drawing a comparison with sport. “It’s like saying that a group of 11 professional players make a successful football team: That is not the case. Only successful club management like that of Uli Hoeness at Bayern Munich has established the club at the top on a long-term basis. That applies just as much to clusters.“

And Walter goes one step further. “According to the latest academic findings the strength of the local logistics clusters determines just how efficient industry clusters are. In the age of global sourcing and global supply & distribution networks, purchasers and sales people rely on smoothly running supply chain management. And it is precisely this that networked logistics clusters are unique in offering. Recent research even reveals that for all other industry clusters logistics clusters are decisive in corporate success and established companies settling somewhere – and as such decisive for the region as well.“ Walter quotes Michael E. Porter, the well-known Harvard economist and “father of the cluster theory“, whom he visits once a year.

At the moment, however, the project office is busy with its own “logistics”. “Events, conferences, meetings and talks, talks, talks “, says Stefan Walter. You can sense the momentum. 70 project partners have already been acquired. All 15 universities in Hesse are now on board, covering over 90 logistics and mobility-related areas. 50 professors, for the most part from the founding universities, will work at the House of Logistics and Mobility on a long-term basis. Another 40 will work in project offices. These will be joined by over 200 academics from around the world, one of them from Harvard. At the HOLM he will expand Michael E. Porter’s cluster ideas. Construction work is due to commence in 2010, almost 90 percent of the planned gross surface area 20,000 square meters already having been earmarked. In 2012 it will then be a case of “Go HOLM!“

Martin Orth