PhD Position in Supply Chain 2050 within the Industry x Academia Initiative (Supply Chain Powersystems Network), starting September 2026

Tasks

ABOUT US

At Daimler Truck, we change today’s transportation and create real impact together. We take responsibility around the globe and work together as one global team. We drive our progress and success together – everyone at Daimler Truck makes the difference. Together, we want to reduce our carbon footprint, increase safety on and off the track, develop smarter technology and attractive financial solutions. All essential, to fulfill our purpose - for all who keep the world moving.

Become part of our global team: You make the difference - YOUMAKEUS

Within Daimler Truck, the Truck Technology Operations Supply Chain organization covers a broad end-to-end scope across the powersystems supply chain, with a focus on plants in Kassel, Mannheim, Gaggenau and Detroit as well as global parts supply for overseas operations. Our work spans core supply chain domains such as supplier steering, in-plant logistics, transportation, network management, and digitalization.

With Supply Chain 2050, we are launching a forward-looking industry–academia initiative to explore how the world of 2050 may evolve and what this could mean for future supply chains. The ambition is to think beyond today’s constraints, understand how to make supply chain a true differentiator in the future, and identify which strategic choices and capabilities need to be built already today.

The project follows a two-step logic: it starts with unconstrained exploration of future worlds and their implications for supply chains, and then translates these insights into more focused pathways and selected areas for deeper work.

ABOUT THE JOB:

As a PhD candidate in Supply Chain 2050, you will work at the interface of academic research and industrial transformation. You will help shape a future-oriented project that combines strategic foresight, scientific rigor, and real-world relevance in one of the world’s largest truck manufacturers.

Your role will be to explore how external developments may reshape supply chains over the coming decades and to translate these insights into meaningful implications for future supply chain design, operations, and organizational development. Beyond the first exploration phase, the role also offers the opportunity to contribute to more focused topics in a second phase of the project, depending on the findings and your specializations and strengths.

Your tasks will include:

• Develop and structure future world scenarios for 2050 and derive implications for supply chain design, operations, and organization
• Research and analyze long-term drivers of change such as geopolitics, technology, environment, societal developments, and workforce evolution
• Explore what companies need to establish today in order to build resilient, future-ready, and differentiating supply chain capabilities for 2050
• Translate broad first-phase insights into focused themes and more concrete pathways in a second phase of the project
• Contribute to the identification and further development of potential focus areas such as future workforce models, digitalization, transport and logistics concepts, supply chain networks, or organizational design
• Work closely with experts and executive leaders across the supply chain organization to integrate practical perspectives and challenge ideas in a real industrial context
• Prepare analyses, workshop inputs, structured concept papers, and management-ready materials to drive the progress of the project
• Build a strong bridge between scientific methodology and practical application

WHAT WE OFFER YOU

We offer the opportunity to work on a highly visible and future-oriented topic at the interface of research and industrial transformation.

You will gain deep insights into multiple supply chain functions and beyond inside one of the world’s largest truck manufacturers and collaborate with practitioners, experts, and leaders across a broad industrial environment. The role offer