«Smart» Logistics: Problems and Prospects in the Modern World

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused serious damage not only to the economies of a number of countries, but also became a serious test for the entire world economy, causing a crisis that, even according to preliminary estimates, will lead to a deeper and more protracted recession than the global financial and economic crisis of 2008. In the second half of 2020, when COVID-19 vaccines are already in effect, the threat to public health fades into the background, giving way to the economic crisis, and, most importantly, the search for ways out of a difficult socio-economic situation. That is why the study of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on logistics and the search for crisis management tools in logistics is so relevant. In this article, the authors hypothesize that digitalization as a promising tool for economic crisis management should play an important role in this process. This article identifies the current problems of logistics that arise in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis, substantiates the prospects for systematic and highly effective crisis management in logistics based on digitalization, and offers applied recommendations for this.