CATALYST

CATALYST develops and accelerates Connected Automated Transport innovations for safer, more efficient and sustainable heavy road transport.

The CATALYST Living Lab is a community, knowledge hub and applied research program for improving safety, efficiency and sustainability focused on the logistics sector. We do this by developing Connected Automated Transport (CAT) innovations for heavy road transport, testing and improving them using simulations and practical experiments.

In the CATALYST Living lab we look at those CAT applications that create social value as an economic business case for heavy road transport. One may think of innovations made possible by improved connectivity and automation, such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), truck platooning, duo trailers (Super EcoCombi), intelligent traffic lights and autonomous vehicles for automatically tracked areas such as public roads. In the living lab ecosystem, industrial parties, trade shows and knowledge institutions work together to develop, evaluate, monitor and implement valuable solutions. With this we want to help logistics partners in end-to-end supply chains to assess and help accelerate the impact of CAT, in order to contribute to safer, more efficient and more sustainable transport and logistics.

Project website: https://dutchmobilityinnovations.com/spaces/1182/catalyst-living-lab/landing

PLANET

With a duration of 36 months, PLANET joins 33 organisations including public, private and R&D companies with the vision of advancing in the European Commission’s strategy for Smart, Green and Integrated Transport and Logistics. In this manner, PLANET will progress in the development of tools to better interconnecting infrastructure (TEN-T, Rail-Freight Corridors) with geopolitical developments (New Silk Road and emerging trade routes). PLANET also aims to optimise the use of current and emerging transport modes and technological solutions, while ensuring equitable inclusivity of all participants, increasing the prosperity of nations, preserving the environment, and enhancing EU citizens’ quality of life. The realization of this vision is what PLANET calls the Integrated Green EU-Global Transport & Logistics Network (EGTN).

In view of this strategy, PLANET will go beyond strategic transport studies and ICT for transport research, by rigorously demonstrating emerging concepts like the Physical Internet, IoT applied to logistics, Blockchain and Predictive Analytics technologies in three EU-global real-world corridors (China – EU- US) with the objective of increasing the corridor’s end-to-end visibility.

The project organises its activities around three Living Labs or demonstrators:

• Physical Internet and Blockchain for optimised door-to-door Asia-Europe corridors – Mediterranean Corridor.
• Synchromodal dynamic management of TEN-T & intercontinental flows promoting rail transport.
• Internet of Things for Silk Road Route – reliable, transparent and fully connected corridor from China to the EU.

Project website: https://www.planetproject.eu/

Digital Platforms game and teaching cases

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), as a leading international University, aims at bringing experiences and findings from state-of-the art research on logistics and supply chain management to the classroom as quickly as possible. An inspiring topic of research is the development and implementation of digital platforms that bring along logistics innovations. As it concerns complex problem-solving in an authentic context, the best way for students to learn about these phenomena is by experiencing the challenges, taking the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, and searching for creative solutions to the problems they are facing. However, traditional lectures and seminars cannot meet this learning goal because they often lack experiential elements. Due to factors such as time constraints, cohort size etc., it is also challenging to engage all students with interactive exercises. Developing high quality experiential and interactive learning tools such as teaching cases and serious games can remediate these challenges. The project is funded by Center for Learning Innovation at Erasmus University.

The project has resulted in a board game and four teaching cases that are accessible (for free) via the RSM Case Centre and available via:

https://repub.eur.nl/ppl/178337

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Government Digitization to Enhance Agro-food Chains (GEDAC)

With the research project GEDAC, a consortium from industry, government and knowledge institutes aims for transparent, efficient, and paperless supply chains. In particular, the project aims to analyze the benefits of digitalizing phytosanitary and veterinary certificates, which can contribute to the efficiency of international supply chains and mitigate product and process risks.

A shipment of fresh produce is always accompanied by a certificate containing data relating to freshness, origin and food safety. A ‘passport’ like this means the shipment can travel from checkpoint to checkpoint until it reaches its destination. The aim of the research project at RSM is to enable the paper certificate to be replaced by an electronic certificate which will allow participants in the logistics chain to access information in digital format when a shipment comes in, and to learn from trends and differences in the cargo and freight information. A consortium of Dutch stakeholders has agreed to start digitalizing certificates and to jointly develop a ‘serious game’ that can kindle enthusiasm among the parties involved.

Paper certificates form a weak link in international supply chains; they contribute to inefficiencies and form an obstacle to trade because they delay lead times, reduce predictability, make activities unreliable and create additional administrative burdens. These have a particularly negative effect on perishable products. E-certificates simplify and accelerate processes relating to certification and compulsory documentation, which in turn enable the improved co-ordination of global supply chains.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can benefit from these advantages, which strengthens the competitive edge of the Dutch economy. Greater logistics efficiency and the avoidance of food wastage can increase sustainability and contribute to reducing CO2 emissions.

The research project is transdisciplinary because it involves the integration of agro-logistics and supply chain management with legal and customs aspects in the phytosanitary and veterinary domains.

The project is funded by two organizations; knowledge and innovation partnership TKI-Dinalog and scientific research organization NWO, in partnership with the Province of Limburg.

Project link: https://www.dinalog.nl/project/e-certificates-in-international-agro-and-food-chains-government-digitization-to-enhance-agro-food-chains-gedac/

TransSonic

The TransSonic project is a 4-year project in the Complexity in Logistics call of NWO and the Top Institute Logistics in The Netherlands that starts in July 2017. The project will research the technical and organizational blockers and enablers, and their interaction, for providing integrated seamless multimodal transport services in the Netherlands. In such a system, a network of interdependent actors –on different transport modalities– have to work together and adapt in real time to changing demands of freight forwarders and shippers as well as changing availability of infrastructure and assets. We will research whether such services can emerge from the combination of social interactions between transport network organizations and novel, but already existing, technologies for sensing and for information exchange between partners, such as sensor networks, a blockchain ledger, and smart contracts. For the social interaction, simulation and gaming will be used as the main research instrument to study inter-organizational interactions as well as intervention and reward mechanisms that would lead to new types of services. Two issues play a central role in the research: lack of situational awareness about the current state of the system, and the low level of trust between transport partners Both are known to be major blockers for organizing multimodal or synchromodal transport. The project will therefore study the effects of utilizing sensor technology and new smart contracts between parties to (partly) overcome these issues. To develop and test the technological and organizational solutions, and their integration, a combination of simulation, gaming, data analysis and case studies in industry will be conducted.

Rotterdam School of Management leads the work on technical asspects and solutions. The project website can be found here,

STAD

Automated driving is expected to drastically change the mobility of passengers and freight and spatial structure during the coming decades. Public and private parties need to redefine their strategic decision making in light of these changes, but information on potential impacts is lacking. This project studies the implications of automated driving using a wider spatial and temporal scope than previous research. The project is based on an integrated approach combining spatial economics, passenger and freight transport, traffic safety and multimodal transport networks. Integration between these discipline is addressed by an integrated modelling approach, common case studies and pilots. The project will be conducted in collaboration with pilots in the Netherlands such as Automated taxis (Delft-Zuid), WePod (Ede Wageningen), Rivium (Rotterdam) and the port of Rotterdam as well as abroad.

The project will be conducted by research groups of Delft University of Technology (consortium leader), Free University of Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Eindhoven University of Technology and Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. The project is conducted in close cooperation with non- academic partners from the Southern Wing of the Randstad, which comprises cities such as Rotterdam, The Hague and Delft, as well as the port of Rotterdam. Amsterdam, the province of Gelderland, consultancies, public transport operators and knowledge institutes such as TNO, SWOV are contributing to the project as well. The Dutch ministry of Infrastructure and Environment is aiming for a leading international role in testing automated vehicles and is strongly supporting the proposed project.

Rotterdam School of Management leads the sub-project on freight and logistics applications, with an emphasis on truck platooning. Project website can be found here.

SELIS

SELIS is aimed at delivering a ‘platform for pan-European logistics applications’ by (1) embracing a wide spectrum of logistics perspectives, and creating a unifying operational and strategic business innovation agenda for pan European Green Logistics; (2) establishing an exceptionally strong consortium of logistics stakeholders and ICT providers, that can leverage EU IP from over 40 projects so as to create proof of concept Common Communication and navigation platforms for pan-European logistics applications deployed in 8 living labs representing the principal logistics communities; and (3) establishing a research and innovation environment using the living labs to provide data than can be used for discovery of new insights that will enable continuous value creation supporting the large scale adoption of SELIS.

The Shared European Logistics Intelligent Information Space is a network of logistic communities’ specific shared intelligent information spaces termed SELIS Community Nodes. SELIS Community Nodes are constructed by individual logistics communities to facilitate the next generation of collaborative, responsive and agile green transportation chains. SELIS Community Nodes link with their participants’ existing systems through a secure infrastructure and provide shared information and tools for data acquisition and use, according to a ‘cooperation agreement’. Connected nodes, provide a distributed common communication and navigation platform for Pan European logistics applications. Each Node decides what information wishes to publish and what information wants to subscribe to. The SELIS Community Node concept represents the evolution of a longline of research in this area. The fundamental principle is that it provides a ‘lightweight ICT structure’ to enable information sharing for collaborative sustainable logistics for all at strategic and operational levels.

In the project, Erasmus University leads the work package on Business Model Innovations, and the Living Lab in port of Rotterdam with industry partners Port of Rotterdam, APM Terminals, Maersk Line, and Wayz. The project page can be found here.

CO2REOPT

Efficient and environmentally friendly transports are of utmost importance for Europe. The CO2REOPT project aims at optimising transport supply chains by developing decision support systems for the coordination and synchronization of transports from a supply chain perspective. The consortium includes industrial and academic partners from Sweden (SICS, LKAB and TRV), Norway (SINTEF and JBV) and the Netherlands (EUR, SAMSKIP and SmartPort).

The transports in multimodal transport corridors typically involve several transport operators, each having their own agenda and objectives. Operators optimize their own subsystem, while it is of utmost importance to optimize the whole transport corridor. Multimodal supply chains often follow fixed timetables for the individual transports in the chain. This approach results in e.g. waiting for the next scheduled transport, leading to longer transportation times and storage costs. Further, upstream delays and disruptions, which are accumulated in the logistics chain, aggravate the problems and lead to further delays and secondary effects, such as low punctuality. Approaches to remedy the situation are to generate robust timetables capable to accommodate uncertainties (to a given extent), to support dynamic replanning of timetables, and also to have active disruption management.

In CO2REOPT, the robust and dynamic replanning of timetables, optimal disruption management, and design of cross-border synchromodal transport chains, will be studied from a supply chain perspective.

The objective is to: (1) adapt timetables to the supply prediction at the origin, the demand at the destinations, and the hub conditions and storage predictions underway, while taking fleet availability and transport leg balance in consideration, and to (2) design optimal cross-border synchromodal transport services. For this purpose, two freight corridors will be considered: (1) the main European iron ore corridor, by railway from Kiruna and Narvik, by ship from Narvik to Rotterdam, and again by rail from Rotterdam to central Europe, and (2) the Samskip services between Norway, Sweden, and various locations in Europe via the ports of Rotterdam and Duisburg. For the first one, the synchronization of timetables and (re)planning of dispatching need to be coordinated to make them effective from a supply chain perspective. For the second one, the economic optimization of synchromodal transport services is central. The two cases are interconnected as a synchromodal service can directly benefit from improved disruption management. The potential impact is both to decrease dependency on road transports, to increase punctuality on the important iron ore corridor (+15%), and to support the development of new synchromodal transport services. The decreased dependency on road transports will lead to improved sustainability of the transport chains.

For more information, see the project page.

Boxreload

Road freight transport of maritime containers is a quite fragmented market; the destination and time of delivery for an import order of a hauler rarely matches an origin location of its export orders to be collected. This implies that containers need to be brought empty to the port or the inland destination, causing costs, fuel use and emissions that one preferably avoids.

Collaboration between road haulers for the transport of maritime containers helps to improve the utilisation of trucks and containers. The idea is to find opportunities among haulers to match truck loads, i.e., reloading an import with an export, or reloading via depot.

This idea is further developed under the name of Boxreload, initiated by PARIS Optimal Transport Planning division of Hutchison Ports, based on the existing PARIS planning system.

As part of a EU funded TEN-T project, Erasmus University evaluated the Boxreload pilot. Researchers considered the performance of the actual system for the haulers involved, the potential for expansion of the number of haulers in the actual system, and the potential improvement the Boxreload system. Moreover, barriers and enablers of system adoption has been considered as well. Here the expansion of the system in a given area, but also to other regions in Europe has been considered. These considerations contribute to a better understanding of the commercial viability of the Boxreload system.

More information about he box reload system is provided here.

Truck Platoon matching for collaborative planning

The introduction of 2-truck platooning – two trucks virtually coupled driving at less than 1 second headway – will introduce new logistics concepts in the Supply Chain. Carriers obtain fuel consumption reductions through platooning and even higher benefits if they form 2-truck platoons with other carriers. Shippers may encourage their carriers to form as many platoons as possible to exploit the synergy potential, and benefit from lower emissions and more sustainable transport services.

This project addresses the industrial challenge to be able to schedule platoons or dynamically form platoons on-the-fly, by realizing a collaborative matching and planning competency. This competency builds on Vehicle Routing Problem solutions adding 2-truck platoon planning characteristics and parameters. To that end, we develop a quantitative Platooning-Optimizer (PLATO) that enables the planning and formation of scheduled and dynamic truck platoons. Platoons will be formed within one supply chain network, across multiple networks, and by means of a neutral intermediary Platooning Service Provider (similar to a 4C). Real world data from port-related container transportation and supply chain operations will be used to provide a proof of concept. The collaborative planning has to be evaluated in light of the impact on the supply chain, from financial, strategic, and operations perspectives. Hence, platooning will only become successful if the crucial stakeholders in the supply chain have a positive business case with regards to platooning. To that end, we develop a generic platooning business case build on 2 scenarios for platooning formation: centralised scheduled and on-the-fly ad-hoc matching.

The project is funded by the Netherland Organisation for Scientific Research, SmartPort, and Port of Rotterdam; see summary.