Commercial Transport

The Flemish authorities use a strategic freight model to forecast the demand for freight transport in the future and to support the decision making process for large infrastructure investments. In addition, the estimated truck matrix is input for the Flemish strategic passenger transport model.

This study estimates a disaggregate freight generation model with the French shipper survey ECHO. This survey contains accurate information about French shippers, with variables describing their economic activity, the diversity of their production, their relationships with their clients and carriers, etc. These variables and their influence on production and attraction are first investigated sequentially. Then generation models are estimated using ordinary least squares, through various approaches: continuous explanatory variables only, continuous and qualitative variables and their interactions, and finally simple models for applications with limited data availability.

Due to the structural heterogeneity of freight transport and its long-term subordinate consideration, there have been low research activities in this field as well as low motivations to integrate this segment into transport demand models for decades. There is also no generally valid framework for freight transport modelling in comparison to passenger transport modelling. Without a common framework, it is difficult to exchange ideas between scientists and to enable an efficient communication and solid agreements between a client and a contractor of a transport modelling service. This contribution presents a typological order of characteristics of freight transport demand models which covers their internal structures and employed methods. In addition, a systematic overview of selected international freight transport demand models is given.

Concentrations of population and economic activities in urban areas have been growing for the last decades. Further trend is the increasing share of e-commerce activities of private households. This results in a higher share of flexible and more small-scaled deliveries. Consequently, an increased share of trips of small and medium sized freight vehicles has been observed and is expected in urban areas. These development drivers of urban freight transport can be investigated by this present methodological approach. Therefore, an approach of a System Dynamics (SD) model linked with a microscopic freight transport simulation is shown in this contribution. This extract is embedded in the overarching research project Sustainable Freight Transport in Urban Areas—Assessing Impacts of Suitable Measures by System Dynamics based Freight Transport Models.

A widely excepted axiom is that transport demand is driven by economic activity. Consequently there is much research on the connection between the economy and freight transport. It is also accepted that highly aggregate indicators like the GDP are not suitable for forecasting purposes of specific commodities. In this paper we analyse the connection between distinct industries and commodities. Four contentions are proved for the case of Germany based on publicly available data from 1999 to 2007: (1) gross value added (GVA) is a suitable variable to derive the amount of freight transported in a country; (2) supply and use tables help in identifying the economic activities with relevance for the transport demand of specific commodities; (3) the consideration of dynamics in GVA development is paramount for freight generation, more than the dynamics of the economic structure (i.e. the change in relevant industries for specific commodities); (4) economic activities on the consumer side of commodities (receiving industry) explain best the freight generation. These four findings are of interest for freight modelling and forecasting. They also contribute to the discussion regarding coupling and decoupling of transport from economic growth by showing that for a majority of commodities a close tie between freight transport and economic growth of specific industries exists.

To include economic and commercial interactions in traffic and transport models additional objects and aspects have to be included logistical cause-effect relationships, additional stakeholders (e.g. freight forwarder), additional markets (e.g. distribution logistics) and additional instruments to control economic and commercial traffic (e.g. restrictions of access, delivery time slots, etc.). For modelling these objects of economic and commercial interactions standardized approaches are missing in Germany and abroad—there is a gap in the “toolbox of traffic modelling”. There are several model ideas, but both the contracting authorities as well as the modellers in practice usually do not have an overview of the existing approaches, a recommendation of the aspects to be considered and named requirements, which economic transport models should achieve. In this contribution the requirements will be described and explained with reference to examples. The examples are taken from existing and hypothetical models for private and commercial transport.

This paper will provide a closer view on the early adopters of electric vehicles (EVs) for commercial transport in Germany, with a focus on the influences of electric vehicles on internal corporate processes. In particular, trip patterns involving EV usages will be described and the question whether the integration of EVs in fleets has an impact on trip patterns will be discussed. The results first show EVs are purchased as additional vehicles. Only forty percent replaces a vehicle powered by internal combustion engine (ICEV). Second EVs are driven by commercial users having trip profiles for integrating them directly without any adjustments. Third, the impact on transport organizations is therefore deemed to be marginal.

Electric logistic concepts prove to be an inevitable trend for current challenges of city logistics. This seems to be a reverse development from combustion engines to electric drives and existing distribution policies. Within sustainable solutions the logistic sector needs to respond and perform their offered services to reflect new requirements and maintain quality of its services. It is possible to realize transports of goods without large trucks, especially in urban areas. Payloads and operation distances in this segment are low. Therefore, numerous light electric vehicles (“light urban vehicles” as e-trikes, “light duty vehicles” as light trucks, etc.) can be used. In some European cities emission-free last mile delivery services are already operational. For realizing sustainable city logistics, specific requirements need to be taken into account. Focusing on services for small quantities, requirements and solution concepts were investigated within the project “Urbane E-Lieferservices” (Modellregion für Elektromobilität Graz, Austria). After the introduction to the overall project, the content of this paper focuses on two investigated areas: first, we display a survey about specific requirements for urban e-based logistic concepts for SME in Graz. After that, we explain the related testing campaign for e-based logistic services. Finally, we add a summary and outlook.

The transport industry, consumers, shippers and political bodies are all pressing for a global standard for the calculation of emissions along supply chains. Comparability of the chains’ efficiency, reduction of energy consumption, transparency of the carbon footprint of products and identification of best practice are at the core of the need for such a standard. It has several important pre-conditions though: it needs to be globally applicable, cover all modes of transport and all supply chain elements, it needs to be easy to use and transparent in its mechanisms. Furthermore, it must be clear and concise, particularly in its requirements towards quality of data used for emission calculations, whether it is measured, standard or default values. In order to meet these requirements and to ensure the standard’s acceptance, its development needs to be industry-led. Additionally, the standard needs to balance the aspects of ease of use, transparency and flexibility. Several steps into that direction have been taken, such as: EN 16258, GHG Protocol, ISO 14064, ISO/TS 14067, standards developed by IATA, Smart Way and Green Freight Europe or tools and approaches such as EcoTransIT or GreenEfforts and many more. So far there is no standard in place though that aims at the specific transport chain requirements, is globally applicable and covers all supply chain elements as well as all modes. It is the aim of this paper to show in more detail, based on the findings of real-life test cases, which existing gaps need to be addressed in a next step of standardisation efforts. Furthermore, the paper describes which approaches and perspectives offer themselves from a combined industry-research perspective for the development of a standard for emissions along transport chains.

The container revolution has resulted in major changes in international trade and it is the one of the most important contributions to the globalization of the world economy. In addition to an increased coordination and cooperation between different forms of transport, containerization offers benefits in form of direct effects on cost-reduction and acceleration of the “door to door” cargo distribution process, which is of crucial importance to transport users. In a constant exchange of goods between buyers and sellers around the world, goods of various type and different size and weight are transported. In most logistics systems, minimization of costs has always been the main objective. This paper departs from the previous approaches and includes the study of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, taking into consideration the beneficial impact of their reduction and quality analysis on sustainability of ecosystems. A bi-objective mathematical model is proposed, aimed at minimizing container transportation costs and CO₂ emissions. This paper analyzes an intermodal transportation chain, based on the import-way and composed of two legs. The intermodal transportation network is composed of three categories of nodes—origin port, gateway ports and destination, and two link categories—maritime and inland. Furthermore, the inclusion of additional objectives into the model enables obtaining more accurate information of the observed objects. The transportation costs were considered for each of the most-commonly used types of containers in container transport, depending on different cargo volume and weight. The total CO₂ emissions include ocean transport emissions from container ships and land emissions produced by truck and rail. The model was programmed in MATLAB. The bi-objective optimization has been analyzed by use of different carbon footprint factors for different modes of transport. The developed mathematical model offers a broad range of possible solutions and provides a possibility of their ranking and selecting the most optimal solution, with respect to minimization of transportation costs and CO₂ emissions. The advantage of this model is its broad applicability to various ‘point to point’ relations, in which containers are transported by combination of sea and land. The model application enables obtaining adequate and reliable solutions to the observed problem. The combination of the modelling approach and the methods used is novel and with appropriate input parameters enables accurate results in logistic networks.

The assessment of emissions caused by logistics operations in general and their allocation to individual customers is a major challenge for logistics service providers. Presently, numerous standards and guidelines exist (e.g. ISO 14064-1, ISO 14065, DIN EN 14040, DIN EN 14044, DIN EN 16258, PAS 2050) for the calculation of GHG-emissions caused by logistics processes. Due to missing or incomplete approaches, the assessments as well as regular updates are quite expensive and time-consuming. This endangers in particular the competitiveness of small and medium-sized (sme) logistics service providers who—in the end—need to gather and provide the relevant information for their clients. To support sme-logistics services providers by calculating and allocating GHG-emissions, a CO₂-method kit has been developed, which was implemented in MS Excel. This method kit consists of various demonstrator-tools for each mode of transport and stationary processes in logistics systems. Even complex transport chains can be illustrated with this CO₂-method kit as well. Overall, the method kit offers a pragmatic solution for everyday business. The underlying calculation methods determine the energy consumption, CO₂- and CO₂-emissions, distinguished between Well-to-Tank (WtT) and Tank-to-Wheel (TtW). These are part of a Well-to-Wheel (WtW)–Analysis. Aim of this analysis is to express global environmental impacts in CO₂-Equivalents—considering the extraction of resources and the usage of fuel (Brinkman et al. 2010). Based on the resulting greenhouse gas values, logistics companies can now identify and carry out appropriate measures to reduce their CO₂-emissions. The existing method kit is currently extended to include the determination of GHG-emissions of handling operations in multimodal container Terminals. An in-depth analysis of terminal handling operations and influencing factors on resource energy consumption was needed to develop the CO₂-method kit extension. As a first step, the layout and load data were analyzed to picture the terminal as well as the distribution of job orders for the observed period. In addition, crane cycle were deconstructed into sub-processes and transferred into standard processes. Container, weight and distance classes were defined for the assessment of the power consumption data. The power consumption data was collected by measurement devices attached directly to the cranes. In course of the evaluation the measured values were accurately assigned against the crane movements and processed orders in the period under review. Finally, average energy consumption values for handling cycles were determined for the defined container and distance classes, based on selected indicators.

The growth of containerised sea transport has caused a demand for improved efficiency and increased capacity in the transit through seaports as well as in the transport to and from seaports in the hinterland. To stimulate the development of those seamless intermodal transport chains, the concept of dry ports has been established. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how value-added services can support the transformation of a conventional inland terminal into a dry port and how an existing dry port can be further developed through the use of value-added services. This conceptual paper combines literature from the field of dry ports with literature addressing value-added services, with data obtained through interviews with actors in the transport system. The conclusions indicate that the development of dry ports and their viability may depend on different value-added services being available at the dry port, however only once the infrastructure and basic services are in place. Furthermore, the availability of value-added services may increase the dry port’s attractiveness. This paper provides a platform for further research on the importance of value-added services for dry ports’ development.

This paper contributes to the understanding of spatial location of logistics activities in an outlying region. A quantitative analysis in Burgundy (French region) underlines the important polarization of warehousing developed in a limited area during 1980–1990s intensified during 2000s. The companies that locate their warehouses in Burgundy have different strategies that could explain this outlying location. For example, the low cost of land, favorable terms of tax system and the presence of a labour pool with an important unemployed rate incentive could incentive some companies to locate their warehouses in an outlying region like the Burgundy.

Modern Information Technologies (IT) have a substantial impact on the field of transport and logistics since they facilitate processes such as managing and monitoring of cargo flows. In inland navigation on the Danube, for the purposes of supporting the traffic and transport management, the River Information Services (RIS) are deployed. However, the existing RIS applications still focus very much on the safety of inland navigation without including the logistics services to the participants in the supply chain (SC). Within this paper, the analysis of all inland waterway SC integrated processes, involved subjects, their organizational, functional and informational network has been carried out. Additionally, the analysis of the existing internal IT systems in the SC nodes, particularly in the inland waterway ports was conducted. Based on the analysis, the concept and the algorithm with all necessary procedures for the paperless flows of information and documents have been determined. Upon the concept and the algorithm, the software for the networking of all SC subjects and for enabling the paperless flows of information and documents among them has been developed. The software was tested in the Port of Novi Sad. The tests results confirmed all assumptions regarding the software potential and expected benefits, proofing for the software to be future-oriented tool whose further development and application should take place in the cloud.

The demand concerning availability and quality of goods is still raising and calls for better and better matching processes. This affects in particular perishable goods. These have to be transported about a complex transport chain up to POS within minimum time. The planning of these highly complex transport chains is affected by insufficient systems with multiple media discontinuities. Because of this reason all involved parties are planning the transports with high safeties resulting in short term cancellations what makes sea transports unviable.

Due to the steadily increasing freight rates it is being searched in logistics for decades for methods to organize transports and their communication within the framework of international freight traffics more efficiently and sustainably. An idea emerging consistently in this context is the more efficient configuration and coordination of multimodal transport chains whereby freights are being transported by utilization of different transport carriers like e.g. ship, rail and road. Through a better intercommunication of the actors involved in a transport, also across different transport carriers, environmentally harmful emissions shall be reduced in the midterm, the costs on long distances shall be lowered and information asymmetries in single transport markets shall be mitigated. Different future- and innovation-oriented projects, like e.g. LOGFOR, CODE24 and CENTRAL EUROPE, make efforts to achieve measurable progress in this area. Within the framework of the CODE24 project the prototype ORFE of an online rail freight exchange has been developed at the Institute for Production and Industrial Information Management of the University of Duisburg-Essen. It demonstrates functionalities for a more transparent communication of available transport services and also supports the configuration of multimodal supply chains. The positive feedback within and outside of the project shows the actual demand for an online support of the service processes within the rail freight industry. For instance, the establishment of the first dedicated online rail freight exchanges in the year 2013 trace directly back to the efforts of the project partners within the CODE24 project. While it remains to be seen whether the hereby established products can permanently prove themselves on the market, the presented paper argues that such online marketplaces will be replaced by such with more innovative approaches in the long run. For though the described concept of an online freight exchange can reduce the non-transparency of single transport markets as well as the costs in case of sufficient participation, its way of communicating transport services carries other problems: the pure contactual mediation between potential business partners requires a high confidence in the communicating institution and cannot, even in case of believable neutrality of the marketplace operator, guarantee contractually binding business transactions as these have to take place outside of the online freight exchange after the contact initiation. From the point of view of the authors, these contact exchanges will be replaced by agent-based freight exchanges in the long run. Such an AFEX-system (“Agent-based Freight Exchange”) will provide a highly automatized and interconnected marketplace which provides the possibility for decentralized and autonomous agents to conclude independently a contract that is optimal for them in a completely transparent market activity from their point of view. The contractual binding auction of multimodal freight transport services is made possible through the application of a two-sided combinatorial auction model which allows the auction participants to submit offers and demands for combinations of transport services that shall be realized by means of different transport carriers. The paper at hand compares the past research and developmental results on online marketplaces for the communication of available transport services like ORFE with the conceptual bases as well as chosen prototypical characteristics of the sketched AFEX-system. Finally, an outlook on prospective, innovative concepts will be given which support the negotiation of contracts for multimodal transport services with multi-agent systems.

Time window constraints have an increasing influence on the cost structure and thus on business models of road freight carriers and forwarders. Caused by the extensive use of slot management systems by warehouse operators the planning and execution of road transport services gain complexity. In order to quantify this impact, the financial implications of time window constraints for road freight carriers and forwarders are investigated. Based on a simulation model different time window specifications (length and temporal position) are evaluated with regard to the corresponding costs of road freight carriers and forwarders. The results show the quantitative effects of time window constraints on the cost structure of road freight carriers and forwarders and highlight the corresponding new challenges arising from the ongoing enforcement of slot management systems.

In this paper, we introduce a functional model of a hybrid supply chain service in air cargo supply chains, which enables actors to deal with internal and external risks. This contribution is embedded in the research activities of the national security research project “CairGoLution”, which is part of the topic “Securing Aviation” of the German security research programme. The project is initiated and financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Goals of the project include an enhancement of security in the air cargo supply chain through use of real time transparency. This is achieved by the concept of hybrid technical solutions, which guarantees the integrity of unit load devices (ULDs) used in the air cargo supply chain. A ULD is a standardised pallet or container for air transportation.

This paper presents a holistic approach to measure quality of service in freight transport chains from shippers’ point of view. The goal is to evaluate holistically intermodal and intramodal freight transport in order to get a harmonized performance of the quality, and to compare different elements of the transport chain with different characteristics. Moreover it aims to be used as a support for decision making in investment allocations and transport policy.

Information sharing in supply chains has taken a centre stage in the discourse of business and research in the last few decades, because information is not only the linchpin for companies for leaping ahead, but also the key to survival. It is thus imperative for practitioners to get inside the “black box” of the decision-making context in which supply chain information is either shared or retained and to exploit the intricate relationship between information sharing/retaining and supply chain performance. In this study, the influential antecedents of the decision-making process including goals, inter-organizational conflicts, power, and trust are investigated on the supply chain level. Employing a comparative case study in the automotive industry, a set of theoretical propositions could be derived by focusing on causal-process observations. Our study contributes to the process of theory construction and has several important implications for practitioners. Since goal conflicts are often not well understood in practice and their impact on supply chain performance is frequently realized with delay, practitioners need to know about the roles of goals, inter-organizational conflict of goals, power, and trust in order to facilitate supply chain-wide information sharing and improve supply chain performance.

This article presents an empirical analysis of the prices’ structure in the road freight industry. For that purpose, we use the French ECHO survey that provides detailed information on the characteristics of shippers and transport operators. First, we show that road freight prices are not a simple linear function of shipments’ attributes. Second, the main determinants of these prices are related to “technical” attributes of the transport services (load weight, travel duration, distance) but also to the characteristics of the shipped goods (density value, commodities constrains). Lastly, the influence of “non-traditional” factors (intensity of the shipper-operator relationship, size of the shipper, intra-group shipments) is highlighted.

This work was created as part of the research project SEAK, which looks into possible causes and consequences of food shortfalls in Germany and is moreover also aimed at developing and evaluating possible mitigation strategies for these shortfalls. For the management of shortfalls in food supply it would be, as a first step, crucial to have information on existing inventories. Making for example decisions on the reallocation of food products into regions affected by disasters is only possible if knowledge about the (regional) availability of food quantities is present in the first place. This could be considered as a necessary transparency. However, in the German food sector, it is hard to get data about the inventories kept by companies like producers, logistic service providers (LSP’s), wholesalers or retailers. This is due to the fact that usually companies are not obliged to publish this information. Moreover, this information is also considered confidential in most companies, since it would give competitors insight into their business model and processes, which are oftentimes the basis for their success. Since information concerning food inventories is not publicly available, it has to be derived in another manner. This work is aimed at providing a scientific basis for the modelling of inventories along food supply chains. More specifically, it does so for the food commodity group of dairy products. We gathered information on all available food products, but limit this particular analysis to dairy products as a showcase of our approach. First, we introduce the data set used for the analysis and the methodology applied to it. In a next step, characteristics of typical German dairy supply chains are described using practical evidence as well as literature findings. The description follows the supply chain’s structure from start to finish, downstream. In the end, concluding remarks are made and possible further research ventures are suggested.

Various urban consolidation centres (UCC) have been implemented in recent years in order to improve logistics performance while at the same time reducing the negative environmental and socio-economic impacts of urban deliveries. However, many UCCs have struggled to operate on a commercial basis and are either terminated or depend on government subsidies. Literature has identified many factors influencing the environmental performance as well as the economic feasibility of urban consolidation schemes, including range and type of products handled, location and spatial coverage of the UCC. The purpose of the paper is to analyse the relevance and significance of the key factors on the environmental and economic performance. The paper takes a case study approach, analysing a pilot project of consolidated last mile deliveries in the city centre of Gothenburg. The findings suggest that the improvement potential of innovative technology enabling zero-emission last-mile distribution is only marginal. Organisational changes enabling a separation of feedering trip and last-mile trip have a much bigger improvement potential, even in case conventional technology is used for last-mile deliveries. The relative importance of organisational changes in comparison to innovative technology increases with city size and level of congestion on the citywide road network. The paper discusses the practical implications and theoretical contribution of these findings.

This chapter examines the logistics behind Hotel-Restaurant-Café/Catering (Ho.Re.Ca.) deliveries in medieval structured cites. These cities are characterised by their sporadic growth pattern around important buildings or squares (Marshall and Garrick 2010). The objective of this chapter is twofold. In the first part, an extensive problem description is given. Originating from limited literature and data, some key words are defined and the playfield in which the main stakeholders operate is described. The main goal of this part is to structure the Ho.Re.Ca. sector in a transparent way and to make the link with the logistics and the specific types of deliveries, required by this economic sector. In the second part of this chapter, the way the main stakeholders perform their activities is examined more in depth. Hereby, the most common delivery patterns are discussed and linked with the physical characteristics of specific goods for which they demand for their daily services. In addition, this chapter investigates both the behaviour and the expectations of the main stakeholders more in depth and in close relation with their operational practices. This research results in four distinctive market typologies and a list of decisive variables which characterise Ho.Re.Ca. specific deliveries, such as high service level, volume and product quality.

As freight distribution is a growing challenge for metropolitan regions, there are calls to actively reintegrate rail freight into urban logistics. The use of railways in urban transport chains helps mitigating negative externalities such as noise, congestion or pollution. Additional strengths of rail transport are (i) the use of road-independent infrastructure, providing a reliable secondary mean of transport, and (ii) the high energy efficiency, due to the system’s characteristics. Despite the advantages of railways, rail freight in urban areas is marginal. One of the reasons might be the lack of suitable train paths due to diverging train characteristics between passenger and freight trains. This paper focuses on the operation of freight railways in densely used mixed traffic networks against the background of network capacity. It determines whether currently unused capacity can be made available to freight by harmonizing train paths and network utilisation maximized by reducing discrepancies between passenger and freight transport. Since passenger transport is the predominant network user, freight operators need to adapt to its characteristics. The study provides an analytical model to determine the effects of changing train characteristics on capacity consumption. With an exemplary timetable study, the findings from the model are compared to the real railway network. The capacity consumption of freight trains can be decreased, most significantly through an increase of acceleration—by increasing traction or decreasing train weight. In contrast, improving train brakes have limited impact. A change of paradigm of how to operate freight trains seems to be necessary. However, increased operational costs for freight operators needs to be weighed against lower capacity consumption to the infrastructure manager’s profit, such as improved network reliability and additional train paths. The paper concludes with measures to reduce capacity consumption and gives an outlook on the context of urban freight transport, particularly at the road-rail interface.

A common and well-established technique for the transportation of goods in facility logistics is the use of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). While the automated (static) loading of such transport systems is state-of-the-art, a fully automated solution for dynamically placing or unloading goods while the AGVs are moving and passing a gripper-equipped robot is still a challenge. This paper therefore proposes a new versatile and dynamic bin-picking approach for box-shaped goods using various computer vision technologies. A new method for real-time motion synchronization between a robot and an AGV will be presented, based on (1) coarse-grained AGV detection in 2D including a prediction of future positions and (2) fine-grained load detection in 3D.

Industry and commerce now depend more than ever on reliable logistics. In practice, however, supply chains face numerous challenges from disruptions such as traffic jams, technical issues, missing goods, and any number of other unforeseeable circumstances. This then calls for manual correction. In the ProveIT project (PROduction plan based Recovery of VEhicle Routing Plans within Integrated Transport Networks), researchers are now developing an IT platform that will give dispatchers the tools they need to make objectively assessed and dependable interventions in connected logistics systems. The aim is to build up reliable, cost-effective supply chains that are not disrupted due to misguided reactions and interventions.

In this paper we review recent advances of randomized AI search in solving industrially relevant optimization problems. The method we focus on is a sampling-based solution mechanism called Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), which is extended by the concepts of nestedness and policy adaptation to establish a better trade-off between exploitation and exploration. This method, originating in game playing research, is a general heuristic search technique, for which often less problem-specific knowledge has to be added than in comparable approaches.