Overview
This research programme aims to support the implementation of the UK government's 'Strategy for Sustainable Distribution' by:
- stimulating academic research and industry uptake of logistics best practice to optimise UK supply chain performance;
- identifying ways to increase supply chain resilience, and;
- exploring future logistics scenarios to inform policy development.
Within the framework given above, outcomes from the research programme include:
(i) evidence based logistics policy development,
(ii) increased capacity in logistics research to drive industry innovation,
(iii) key performance indicators (KPIs) embedded in key industrial sectors, and
(iv) a value for money freight logistics research programme.
More detailed objectives and programme scope are given in the following section.
The organisation and policy context of the programme are indicated by its four sub-themes:
TransportEnergy Best Practice Programme: This programme is concerned with promoting energy efficient best practice within the freight industry as part of the UK government's commitment to improving the energy efficiency within the UK.
Sustainable Distribution: This programme is concerned with encouraging the implementation of logistics best practice by identifying ways to increase the resilience of supply networks and exploring future logistics scenarios to inform policy development.
Home Delivery Operations: The home delivery sector is experiencing unprecedented growth at the same time as more households are becoming single occupied and leisure activities outside the home are taking more of people's time. The Foresight report produced by the Retail Logistics Task Force in 2001 highlighted several important gaps in the current knowledge of the home delivery sector. The aim of this sub-programme is to commission new research in this field, dealing with issues such as operational efficiency and overall transport and environmental impacts of increasing home shopping. A pilot project for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the Home Delivery sector is described in the TransportEnergy BestPractice sub-programme.
TransportEnergy BestPractice – Freight Future Newsletter: A six monthly newsletter describing the current projects within the TransportEnergy BestPractice programme
Funding
Funding for DfT Freight Distribution and Logistics research is on-going and financed by the UK government. The research may be carried out directly by government agencies or commissioned to be carried out by contractors, both academic and non-academic. Some research is collaborative in nature.
Programme budget 2003-4: £3.54 million (= €3.97 million)