Innovative business models, Logistics Arena

Innovative business models. Improving profitability in road haulage operations. Peter Jenni, the operations manager at Hohlenstein AG in St. Gallen, Switzerland, reduced the number of damages on the truck fleet 20% by giving employees quarterly bonuses for driving without damages. Incentive systems, e.g., bonuses or how services are paid for, are crucial in staff and organizational behaviour. The first question to ask in any organization is – “How is . Read More » Want to proof how innovative your tech solution for logistics is? Come to ITA! The Public Demonstrator Centre “ICT for Logistics” is a public space where ICT companies have the opportunity to demonstrate how their technology products and services can help to create innovative solutions, and improve the productivity and competitiveness of logistics companies. Launched in April 2013 in Zaragoza (Spain) and supported by Aragon Technology Institute (ITA), the Centre aims at facilitating the . Read More » Real-time container tracking is ready to take off. The installed base of intermodal shipping containers worldwide has surpassed 20 million and represents a significant market opportunity for the telematics industry. Several wireless M2M operators including Orbcomm, AT&T, Everything Everywhere and Telenor even have assumed the role of end-to-end solution providers of container tracking. A real-time container tracking solution with data logging, satellite positioning and data communication can help . Read More » Small and medium-sized companies sharing fleets of electric vehicles. Imagine a number of different companies sharing a single fleet of electric vehicles. Fraunhofer IAO and eight project partners are busy working out just how to make this vision a reality. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the Shared E-Fleet research project aims not only to work up suitable IT solutions, but also to design the . Read More » Can a parcel be green and on-time? The Green Supply Chain business model. Climate change driven by man-made greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most pressing challenges that society currently faces. Considering that a significant part (approximately 13%, according to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) of these emissions is attributed to transport, and to the logistics industry more specifically (around 5.5% of global GHG emissions), it is no surprise that there . Read More » Aston Martin, Jaguar and Toyota’s cooperative recipe for managing risk. The increasing vulnerability of freight transport chains requires a new approach for identifying potential risks, mitigating their impact and addressing their consequences. For such an approach to be effective, it should extend beyond the boundaries of the single supply chain actor. “Trusted networks” can proactively identify and manage the potential risks in the supply chain. As supply chain and transport . Read More » Less is more (also in logistics) In the effort to reach a global market impact, companies intercept very specific needs of individual consumers, which translates into distributing a huge variety of niche products and into demanding customized shipments by specialized logistics service providers. This is best met by a network of specialized logistic services, each covering a portion of the chain and offering the right cost/performance . Read More » Going down one level to refresh up the air. Underground logistics might sound as science fiction. However, going underground for people transport and to bring hazardous materials and wastes to and from urban areas has been a solution to improve the citizens quality of life since almost two centuries ago. Delivering effectively and efficiently in congested metropolitan areas is a problem really hard to solve. Besides a number of practices . Read More » Crowdsourcing for the last mile. Last-mile crowdsourcing consists in leaning on a group of citizens for completing the last-mile delivery of parcels in a city. This model answers the need to cope with the increased congestion in cities and the resultant problems of inefficiency and negative environmental impacts of local deliveries. Crowdsourcing has some potential advantages that cannot be ignored. For the logistics services providers, . Read More » Going green is getting right (and rich) The ever growing attention for the environment from the society fosters the growth of a new market sector, that of green logistics services. An opportunity for service providers with an ecological spirit, where a good service is one with provable (even better: proved) impact on the environment, not necessarily the cheapest or the quickest one. But this is not only . Read More »