Stefan Hohm

1972 Born on June 25, 1972, in Miltenberg

1992 Joined Dachser and began a dual study program at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University in Mannheim and at the Swiss Business School IMD

1995 Assistant to the Branch Manager at Dachser Frankfurt

1996 Consultant in Logistics Consulting at Dachser’s then Head Office in Munich

1999 Department Manager (Authorized Signatory) at Dachser Kempten (development of the warehouse management software Mikado)

2004 Founder and Branch Manager of Dachser’s new location in Ichtershausen/Erfurt

2008 General Manager at Dachser in Hof

2015 Part-time Executive MBA at the Swiss Business School IMD

2016 Corporate Director Corporate Solutions, Research & Development at Dachser, Kempten

2021 Chief Development Officer (CDO) at Dachser, Kempten

2025 Awarded Logistics Leader of the Year 2025

• The jury particularly commends the practical yet forward-looking implementation of innovative projects under his leadership – from mapping a groupage warehouse in a digital twin and enabling live tracking of swap bodies to championing open standards beyond company boundaries. Together with his team, Hohm sets benchmarks and significantly strengthens Dachser’s competitiveness in the global marketplace.
• Central to this success is the firm anchoring of innovation processes within the Executive Board and the mindset of the family-owned company. This structural backing creates the foundation for embedding innovations sustainably within the company and multiplying them across the network.
• Hohm has been with the company for thirty-three years. Starting as an assistant, he later managed branches, drove software development, and built research teams, while witnessing Dachser’s workforce multiply more than tenfold to nearly 40,000 employees. He knows what doesn’t appear in manuals, corporate language, or press releases. This grounding is paired with a perspective that reaches far beyond industry borders. Silicon Valley, China and India, Stanford University, and an Executive MBA at IMD Business School in Lausanne have all shaped his views on digitalization and innovation.
• A hallmark of his work is the close link between research and practice. At Dachser, Hohm built the Research & Development team, making research both a success model and a strategic pillar of corporate development. He is convinced: Innovation is not a one-man show, and only when business and science collaborate on both a professional and personal level can solutions emerge that prove their worth in practice. Internal expertise – how a process runs, what causes friction, where potential lies – is combined with technological understanding and with people who bridge these worlds.This became the blueprint for the DACHSER Enterprise Lab at Fraunhofer IML in Dortmund, where new solutions are developed, tested, and brought to market readiness. In 2025, Fraunhofer IAIS joined to drive joint work on AI and big data applications for logistics. Here too, the Dachser mindset matters: it’s always more about the “how” than the “what.”
• This principle became particularly visible with the @ILO project, a digital twin for groupage warehouses. Together with Fraunhofer IML, Dachser developed a system that digitally maps every shipment, asset, and process. It enables real-time control, analysis, and optimization – a milestone that won the German Logistics Award in 2023. Simply integrating pallets from swap bodies to rail in the transit terminal has already cut process times by thirty percent.
• Equally groundbreaking is the live tracking of swap bodies and trailers, implemented with IoT technology. Thanks to 5G/LPWAN, transports can now be tracked across Europe in real time – a priceless advantage for customers in terms of transparency and reliability.
• Under Hohm’s leadership, DACHSER Emission-Free Delivery was also launched: battery-electric trucks, vans, and cargo bikes now supply defined city center areas with zero emissions. What began in Stuttgart has since expanded to major cities such as Munich, Paris, and Copenhagen, now covering seventeen cities – with more to follow, including connecting these European hubs via long-haul e-trucks.
• As much as he is focused on his own company, Hohm also thinks bigger. As a co-initiator of the Open Logistics Foundation, he drives industry-wide digitalization with open standards. The goal: digital basic applications as open source, available to all. Not every forwarder needs to build its own navigation system. For non-differentiating functions, shared IT standards provide the solution.
• What all these projects have in common is that they go far beyond simply introducing new software. They reflect the consistent and practice-oriented execution of a sustainable digital transformation that is anchored both in the Executive Board and in the mindset of the family-owned company. At Dachser, research and development are not ends in themselves but a strategic pillar securing the company’s future and competitive edge. Together with his team, Hohm ensures that innovation becomes market-ready solutions – delivering tangible value for customers and the company alike.

Photos: Sebastian Gabsch/Logistics Hall of Fame