Towards Innovative Freight and Logistics

Corinne Blanquart, Uwe Clausen, Bernard Jacob, Corinne Blanquart, Uwe Clausen, Bernard Jacob

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781786300270
• eBook ISBN: 9781119307778
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Civil Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Freight transport faces a dual challenge: it must satisfy the demands of globalized trade and meet environmental requirements. In this context, innovation is a crucial topic to enable the transition from the current transportation and logistics system to a sustainable system.

This book provides an overview of the latest technological innovations in Europe and worldwide, based on ICT and new vehicle concepts, for all modes and all scales (urban, regional, national or international).

The authors consider innovation supply, the process of innovation and innovative business models. Some perspectives and solutions are proposed on the deployment of innovation, specifically concerning the transformation of the organization of the system and the relationships between industry, governmental players, operators and users.

PART 1
Optimization of Freight and Logistics

1
Smart Logistics Corridors and the Benefits of Intelligent Transport Systems

Increasing globalization, competitiveness and customer demands have led to the need for the development of smart and seamless corridors connecting industrial clusters. Connectivity to achieve higher levels of resilience, responsiveness and service provisioning are needed in addition to solid and advanced information sharing. Intelligent transport system (ITS) can play a major role in this supporting concepts such as synchromodality, cross-chain control centers and single windows. Important breakthroughs can be achieved by combining existing technologies and know-how in the context of a shared vision about the future of logistics and the role technology will play. As most transport of goods take place between logistics hubs or clusters the concept of smart corridors connecting smart hubs can be used to define applications that will add value to individual companies by introducing extended connectivity and information sharing. This chapter will detail the concepts of smart corridors, what they are, what they encompass and what the opportunities for the short-term of ITS for the logistics industry will be.

1.1. Introduction

Logistics is a cross-sectorial activity impacting the entire supply chain from the producers and manufacturers to the end-customers. For this reason, logistics needs to be seen not only in the limited sense of goods transport and warehousing where it is a key determinant of business success at the micro-level but also in the wider context of the complex macro-economic role it plays in helping deliver a competitive industrial base. Usually, the broad logistics industry evolves in hubs, which are geographical clusters of logistics activities. They are characterized by high transport service levels and low transport costs. Freight moves along international and national trade routes via hubs, and such movements enable the efficient flow of goods worldwide. This leads to the need for the development of smart and seamless corridors connecting industrial or logistics clusters by solid, safe and secure infrastructures, real-time connectivity and information sharing, reduction of administrative burdens and enhanced intelligent control for resilient and flexible service provisioning. All this in order to cope with the increasing demands from end-users and customers for on-time, reliable, fast, sustainable but foremost low cost delivery. To achieve all this collaboration and joint efforts are needed to make most effective use of available knowledge, technology and operational enforcement.

Information and communication technology (ICT) can have a major impact on coping with the growing complexity of logistics and its importance as a major economic activity in Europe, especially by improving the supply chain visibility, responsiveness and efficiency. These benefits of ITSs can be realized on the level of the individual transport mode, such as eco-driving or truck platooning, and on the level of the transport within and across supply chains, such as coordinated planning and advanced and adaptive slot management. For the latter, there is a need for activities aiming at facilitating the implementation of information platforms, suitable for all stakeholders for bundling and consolidation purposes, as well as development of the “single window” and “one-stop administrative shop” concepts supporting e-freight. Finally, there is a need for service provisioning in the area of tracking and tracing (dGPS and geofencing) supporting developments such as slot and yield management.

In the past 10–15 years ITS has developed and advanced tremendously and opportunities lie in the fact that for several ITS systems freight transport has become a pioneer market due to its smaller size and more consolidated organization and ownership.

To capture the short- and middle-term opportunities and to put them into perspective, we will describe in more detail the challenges of the logistic sector, technological developments and its fit with the logistics domain and its challenges, new logistic concepts that will benefit from ITS and how both of them can be put into practice by mapping them on the smart transport corridor concept.

1.2. Challenges: past, present and future

Transport companies and logistics service providers are quite often part of a complex network of supplier or contractor relationships. Independent of this complexity, due to the fragmentized sector with a majority of medium-sized and small companies, most companies still merely compete on costs, which in the more traditional supplier–shipper relationship was a manageable strategy. Nowadays, we see several trends that translate into an increasingly complex business environment. Globalization and longer and more complex supply chains, increasing customer demands with respect to shorter lead times, high reliability and reduced prices, demand for sustainable solutions and increasing compliance requirements in the field of safety, security and environment can be seen as important developments that require new strategies for the logistics industry.

One of the main challenges for the present and in line with the above conclusions is to become more responsive and resilient while keeping costs at an acceptable level [OON 13a]. Responsive in order to cope with increasing customer demands in terms of lead times, price levels and flexibility but at the same time responsive to be able to optimize the various activities concerned with the transport of goods with respect to fuel efficiency, use of available transport capacity and operating costs. Resilient in order to cope with unexpected disturbances aimed at maintaining the primary functions. This means that two apparently contradicting requirements should be fulfilled: on the one hand, giving more time to the supply chain operations to adapt and to be able to maximize the opportunities of bundling and cooperation and, on the other hand, reducing operational costs in order to keep up with the increasing competitiveness. Often this is referred to as being lean and agile at the same time. The misunderstanding though is that for every business or supply chain lean nor agility as a whole is the solution. Companies or networks of companies should be very careful in determining where they can be lean and where they should be agile. This requires subsequently transparency, intelligence and finally intelligent cooperation based on data and information.

The future will involve constantly adapting synchronized multi-modal transport corridors, connecting industrial and/or logistics hubs thus strengthening the economic importance of the sector on a global scale. The challenge is to identify options for flexibility in time, place and choice of mode by bundling, temporizing goods, smart repositioning and at the same time solving administrative and contractual limitations for these options (new kinds of SLAs, transparency and interoperability). ITS and ICT are major solutions to facilitate increased information exchange among the actors in the logistics sector, similar to the cooperative systems approach in the ITS domain. Connectivity and information sharing will enable companies to better predict and develop operational strategies for the future and increased options for capitalizing efficiency and sustainability gains.

1.3. State of the art

The developments in the area of ITSs, especially short-range dedicated communication protocols (DSRC), cooperative systems connecting infrastructure-based systems with transport modes and all the technologies used for state estimation, situational awareness and automated control have the potential to shape the future of multimodal logistics. This future landscape consists of concepts now being developed such as synchromodality, cross-chain control centers, autonomous controlled transport vehicles and other highly automated tran...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART 1: Optimization of Freight and Logistics
• PART 2: New Vehicle Concepts
• PART 3: Governance and Organizational Issues
• PART 4: Assessment Framework and Future Steps
• List of Authors
• Index
• End User License Agreement