The internet has completely changed the ways in which people communicate. Gradually, the internet is now also getting a firm grip on the physical goods flows. More and more consumers are ordering products via the web instead of buying them in a retail store. From a logistics point of view, this sales channel switch has an enormous impact. Deliveries to traditional brick-and-mortar stores can be made in relatively large quantities at regular intervals. Consumers then buy the product in the store and provide an important logistics service: they transport their own products to their own homes for free. With the internet, products are ordered in small quantities by individual consumers and the web store has to arrange for transporting the products to the consumers' home address. It is almost needless to say that this significantly increases logistics efforts in the supply chain.

 From the consumers' perspective, there seems to be a desire to increase online ordering, provided that some circumstances are improved. An important limiting factor for consumers is the delivery process. In many web stores, the consumer has no influence on the timing of delivery. As a result more than 30% of all orders cannot be delivered at the first delivery attempt. Besides planning, there is also the issue of speed. Information gathering and ordering is so fast on the web, that even a delivery time of 24 hours may feel like a lifetime.

factsheet, details

Project manager: prof.dr. K.J. Roodbergen (email address k.j.roodbergen@rug.nl)

ProSeLo, Proactive Service Logistics for Advanced Capital Goods

 Capital goods are machines or products that are used by manufacturers to produce their end-products or that are used by service organizations to deliver their services. The primary processes of users are strongly dependent on the availability of these capital goods and they require very high availability levels. For these advanced capital goods there is a long-term trend that users are interested in buying a function rather than a product, focusing on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Maintenance costs form often an equally large amount as the price of the new system and direct and indirect costs of downtime can easily be higher. The transition to function-oriented markets offers a great opportunity to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM-s). Clients are signing full service contracts to obtain full maintenance activities and up-time management of their integral systems. The servicer needs to have a well functioning control tower to manage all maintenance activities (=Service Logistics). The objective of this control tower is to achieve the optimal solutions for system up-time and TCO.

factsheet, details

Project manager: Prof. G.J. van Houtum (email address g.j.v.houtum@tue.nl)

Extended Single Window – Information Gateway to Europe

 New Information and Governance Models for International Trade & Logistics

This research projects develops solutions to major issues faced by international logistics industry:

Need for seamless and reliable supply chains

Compliance to revised European coordinated border management procedures

Need to reduce the costs of compliance to governance requirements

The vision is to develop an integrated coordinated border management solution for ports and airports integrating with previous and subsequent procedures for reliable, secure, and cost effective logistic chains as a prerequisite for the Netherlands to serve as an excellent gateway to Europe. This coordinated border management, ‘Extended Single Window’, requires efficient and reliable information for effective joint supply chain planning by shippers, goods owners, transportation companies, forwarders, terminals and other logistic service providers and to use this information to meet government laws and regulations in a cost effective way, e.g. customs and agricultural procedures and VAT.

 The main purpose of Extended Single Window is re-usability of business data by all government authorities for all types of goods movements. Within the context of Single Window, two main approaches can be distinguished:

 The first approach is still a transaction based declaration approach. It is the objective of government authorities to extend such an approach with information re-use between authorities based on one declaration and events for exchanging updates of declaration data by business.

 In the second approach, business processes of logistic actors gather all relevant information, including physical cargo/container tracking by for instance GPS technology. This information is available to government authorities like customs and allows these authorities to track goods movements across borders. This approach based on a data pull principle (e.g. like experimented in ITAIDE) extended with an event mechanism indicating any changes thus allowing seamless and paperless logistics. It requires federated security mechanisms and globally accepted open standards.

factsheet, details

Project manager: Ir. G.R. Zomer (email address Gerwin.zomer@tno.nl)

Ultimate: Efficient Multimodal Hinterland Networks – new concepts for design and operations.

Businesses in the Netherlands play an important role in a large number of global supply chains. This position has resulted from centuries of trading activities, one of the largest ports in the world, a strong fiscal-financial infrastructure, and a strong and innovative logistics industry. Chain innovations that are initiated by “supply chain owners” often find their focal point in the Netherlands.
Different firms in multimodal hinterland networks, such as terminal operators, freight forwarders, information service providers, infrastructure managers, shippers, and receivers, all aim to contribute to a better performance of the overall supply chain. This ambition comes with serious and unexplored challenges, but they are also a tremendous opportunity to develop a sustainable competitive advantage for the Netherlands as the gateway to the European hinterland. The seamless flow of goods from seaports to locations far into the hinterland will be a major enabler to prevent negative external effects from the transport, such as congestion in seaports, congestion on motorways due to too much trucking, and enhance the competitiveness of multimodal inland nodes for warehousing and value added activities.

factsheet, details

 Project manager: Dr. A.W. Veenstra (email address aveenstra@rsm.nl)