Digital & Sustainable Solutions for Future Logistics and Transportation of Goods

Opportunity Area 1: Enhance End-to-End Visibility of Goods

Many different parties, like shippers, LSPs and receiver, want real-time visibility of the goods’ location and condition along the whole logistic chain. A proper documentation of the handovers between the supply chain partners is needed (e.g. local authorities, customs). Data-based opportunities arise especially for self-optimization, recall management, compliance, customer experience and to check reliability of carriers.

Due to cost reasons and lacking data quality, current good’s data tracking isn’t as seamless and transparent as needed. Trackers are often not directly connected with the goods. Furthermore, many heterogenous systems and individual, error-prone barcodes are in place. Identifying goods beyond their barcodes is necessary – let them speak and not their carriers.

How might we…

… allow involved parties along the logistics value chain to generate, store and access relevant logistic data securely?

… build up trust regarding the transfer of data in shipping companies and their clients?

… provide a digital twin of the goods and help to assess the transport quality (safe, secure and on time)?

… provide good data quality in an affordable way and adaptable to regional (country specific connectivity) and environmental conditions?

… simplify or even automate the documentation in control points between the supply chain partners?

…develop a more intelligent tracking-history of the whole logistic chain, keeping the different “episodes together in one story”?

Opportunity Area 2: Make the Load Fit

LSPs aim for minimizing transportation costs by consolidation. Still, semi-loaded and empty trips are not avoidable which scales across the fleet. Currently there is no way of properly assessing the freight space utilization. Wrong shipping data from the shippers to the LSPs increases the mismatch currently. To minimize the risk of transporting too much air, they balance out deviations by overbooking and brokering.

Fleet managers and drivers from LSPs need to deal with non-standardized packaging units from shippers that lead to inefficient loading and increase the risk of damages during transportation. Consequences are high efforts in manual checks or measuring dimensions and weight.

How might we…

… show the deviation between planning and the actual shipment to the fleet manager and their shippers? 

… support freight brokering services by combining transport request data with automatically generated data of empty transport capacity?

… help to react flexible to unforeseeable events (e.g. additional/less loads and other deviations, repair downtimes, sick drivers, accidents)?

… support fleet managers and drivers in planning and loading the truck/ van more efficiently, balanced and safely?

… provide shippers insights to improve packaging to ensure safety, security and quality of goods during transportation? 

… help shippers to layout packaging units in a standardized way (incl. a circular economy approach)?

Opportunity Area 3: Assist Logistic Workers to Perform Best

Unattractive working conditions and the outlook of autonomous driving (street and yard) are leading to the lack of drivers and workers as one of the biggest pains for the entire branch. Increasing traffic, demanding driving conditions, long working days and especially the continuous time pressure diminish the joy, lead to stress, depletion and therefore increase the risk of mistakes and accidents tremendously.

In order to minimize safety risks and increase efficiency, it is of importance to assist and reduce the pressure workers encounter in their daily business. Without autonomous driving in place, enhance the attractiveness of the job to uphold the workers’ motivation.

How might we…

… identify critical situations in the stressful setup to warn in time and prevent accidents in future? 

… lift driver’s motivation and therefore the quality of delivery?

… increase the appreciation and self-esteem of drivers and make them "heroes of the road" again?

… support and take over parts of the job in order to avoid mistakes and increase efficiency?

… support the information flow from and to the driver in an understandable way?

… minimize the administrational effort of accidents and thefts and ease the further analysis for risk management?

… support the fleet manager in monitoring his employees/ fleet and derive efficiency measures?

… support the digitalization of physical documents and processes?

Opportunity Area 4: Optimize Energy Consumption, Support Shifting into New Modes

Logistic companies have to work very economically due to low margins. There are already strategies used by the companies in order to reduce one of the main cost factors – fuel. However, there is still room for improvement to take care of this precious good. Economical behavior and the shift to alternatives should be supported by digital solutions.

Alternative (cheaper) shipping methods, also with less CO2 and noise emission, are required and rising (E-van, e-X-Dock, cargo-bike, etc.).

How might we…

… offer more fuel-efficient ways of driving?

… help logistic companies to reduce their vehicle’s energy consumption? 

… support efficient driving behavior of drivers regarding costs and environment?

… support (cheaper) alternatives to shipping goods by truck?

… provide our expertise to LSPs/ fleet managers to meet cost and emission goals?

… foster the transition from trucks to other ways of moving goods? (Intermodal hubs)