In the intermodal supply chain, load can find its own way in an autonomous fashion. That is called self-organising logistics and according to Jeroen Vester, PhD candidate at Erasmus School of Economics, and Walter Kusters, director of Business Innovation at Ab Ovo, this can be easily realised. Together, they started a four-year research in order to make this plan more concrete.
There already is a lot of technology available to self-organising logistics, such as GPS, IoT, algorithms, clouds, etc. Furthermore, the availability and quality of data is also increasing and this creates the possibility to make planning- and allocation decisions real time and object-oriented. The logic behind the idea is already available as well, but planners still only apply it with the help of their planning systems. However, a part of this logic and planning rules or decisions can be applied in an autonomous fashion by the load or the carriage itself.
The real challenge of this research is, according to Jeroen Vester, that the operator must control the performance of the entire logistic network and not only look at the individual load. So, besides making intermodal supply chains self-oraganising, we must at the same time ensure that general network performances are comparable to the performance of the best and most experienced planners. Moreover, it is not a question of whether self-organising logistics will be realised, but the question is how fast it will become reality. It is important that existing players in the world of logistics also enter the intermodal market. If hey do not want to invest in it, other parties will do so and this will lead to disruption within the sector.
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Read the entire article on logistiek.nl, 2 April 2019