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The German company WASP-Logistik GmbH develops and provides a modular wood logistics platform.The German forest and timber industry is one of the leading industries in Germany, with 1.3 million people employed and annual sales of €181 billion. This sector is also characterised, however, by relatively low returns on its sales. Each additional expense due to increasing fuel prices or lorry tolls in the field of transport logistics immediately limits the entrepreneurial freedom of participants along the supply chain. That said, the industry harbours cost-reduction potential if flows of material and information can be optimised. The necessary basic technology exists, but has yet to be integrated into a marketable product. Furthermore, the existing technologies and software systems are individual, isolated solutions that do not support economical use by smaller companies.On WASP's wood logistics platform, all those involved in the forest and timber supply chain will gain an extended planning horizon they can use to optimise the supply chain across companies and control it by linking existing solutions. It will thus be possible to work in a more economical, future-oriented way. The added value the platform provides will benefit small and midsize enterprises in particular - forwarding agencies, forest companies, and small sawmills, for example. Other products currently available on the market cannot make the same claim.

Product
Based on modern cloud technology, the WASP logistics platform seeks to interlink established software solutions with newly developed modules. It uses geodata to register and manage wood piles, and satellite navigation is integrated for use in timber transport. Wood piles can also be captured by cameras, automatically geocoded, and transferred to the platform.
In addition, the platform makes it possible to handle dispatching with support for GPS (and in the future, Galileo) signals by retrieving vehicles' geocoordinates in real-time using mobile receivers, transferring them to the platform, and displaying positions and locations on a map. Integrated online map services like Navlog, OpenStreetMap (OSM), ArcGIS (ESRI), and Google Maps are also featured.

The core advantage of WASP, meanwhile, is its integration of software applications that are already used in various sections along the entire value chain. Having a common, neutral platform will make the many existing solutions in the heterogeneous timber sector available to a wide range of potential users. Finally, the unprecedented option of associating with one common supplier will enable smaller companies to use software solutions that are usually very expensive.

ESA Business Incubation
WASP-Logistik GmbH is to be hosted at the ESA Business Incubation Centre Bavaria

(Berchtesgadener Land) from December 2011 to December 2013.

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