Research & Development Projects

The R&D projects are an essential part of the Dinalog program plan. The basis

is always the fruitful cooperation between companies and knowledge institutes.

The objective of the projects is the stimulation of the Dutch economy thanks to

innovation in logistics approaches. For example, with more new business on the

basis of the knowledge from the R&D projects.

Call 4 for R&D projects is now open

The Dutch government has formulated a new policy for the field of Economy and Innovation. This policy describes ten top fields, logistics being one of them. A Top Team for the field of Logistics was appointed with the objective to formulate an agenda for the sector with the ambitions and focal points for the long term and a plan of action for the short term in order to stimulate the logistics sector and bring it to the leading top of the world in 2020.

The Top Team Logistics builds upon the previous recommendations of the ‘Van Laarhoven Committee’, the Strategic Platform Logistics as well as the knowledge, ideas and needs of stakeholders in the sector. In addition to the initial 3 main themes from the report of the ‘Van Laarhoven Committee’, the Top Team Logistics has defined 3 additional themes in their advice.

These 6 general themes, that are leading for the National Innovation Program, are:

4C, Cross Chain Control Centers
Core networks of (inter)national connections and multimodal hubs
Service Logistics
Synchromodal transport (closely related to Main Ports / Transport Hubs in Control)
Supply Chain Finance (also seen in relation to Cross Chain Control Centers)
Open ICT platform.

For each theme a national roadmap is currently developed, which makes it possible to map national projects with the objective to analyze which areas need attention in the future as well as what topics in projects have already been covered sufficiently, either by Dinalog projects or non-Dinalog projects. Based upon this gap-analysis, specific focal areas for this particular R&D Call as well as future R&D Calls of Dinalog have been articulated (as described in paragraph 1.3 in the Guide for Project Plan and Program Tender). Although these focal areas are leading in the development of R&D activities of Dinalog for the next 5 years, they certainly do not exclude other innovative proposals that address missing knowledge or ideas and urging needs of stakeholders in the sector.

The time frame for the 4th Call for Proposals for R&D projects and adhering to the themes and specific focal areas is as follows:

December 15, 2011	Open 4th Call for pre-proposals
March 1, 2012; 24.00 hours	Deadline for submission of pre-proposals
March 21 – 23, 2012	Review pre-proposals + notification
May 15, 2012; 24.00 hours	Deadline for submission of full proposals
June 18, 2012	ISAC assessment and ranking proposals
June 26, 2012	Discussion by board and allocation
June 29, 2012	Notification of coordinator through grant allocation letter