Overview
The maritime operators of tomorrow face the challenge of providing a quality of service that is attractive to transport users, which is safe and environment friendly, while making a profit justifying investments of financial and human capital. The purpose of the MARQUAL is to better understand, document, and communicate how the modelling of business processes in the maritime sector may contribute to adapting such operations to meet the requirements from users of waterborne transport in door-to-door transport chains and, at the same time, make them profitable ventures for the operators and for the society. In particular, good quality operations will be examined to demonstrate current best practice.
The major objective was to demonstrate how to efficiently organise and manage intermodal door-to-door transport chains, in which shipping plays a major role, by using logistics management and communication systems.
Metodology of the MARQUAL is to better understand, document, and communicate how the modelling of business processes in the maritime sector may contribute to adapting such operations to meet the requirements from users of waterborne transport in door-to-door transport chains and, at the same time, make them profitable ventures for the operators and for the society. In particular, good quality operations were examined to demonstrate current best practice.
Funding
Results
The focus of the project was the use of information and communication technology with the introduction new elements in the Intelligent Transport System. The main results of the project comprise a transport chain management system available as a web based application available on the Internet, a monitoring system, the efficient implementation of a system integration tool (communication platform), simulation and service profiling technology and tracking and tracing technology. Another important element was the methodology that were developed to show how to implement such systems efficiently in five transport chains based on a generic business model for transport chain management.
Some of the main results D2D aimed to produce were:
- ageneric business model for transport chain management;
- an open data model covering all aspects of intermodal transport;
- a technical solution for a commercial Freight Transport Monitoring Services;
- a technical solution for a commercial Transport Chain Management System;
- samples of "smart" transport equipment and software illustrating the potential for smart technologies to improve the competitiveness of intermodal transport.
Technical Implications
Through the demonstrations, the following technological capabilities and functionalities of the D2D system have been shown:
- easy to create new transport chains and modify existing ones;
- improved planning due to easy access to schedules and automation of tasks;
- improved execution and follow-up of transport chains;
- more efficient order management towards customer and suppliers due to system integration (no need to re-write orders into proprietary systems);
- full status visibility and ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) advice of cargo;
- improved statistics for supplier monitoring and follow-up;
- dynamic planning capacity (exceptions management) based on predefined rules and alerts;
- in-transit visibility;
- invoicing and claims support.
Through application of such functionality and systems, the demonstrations have indicated the following business benefits:
- one central co-ordination point provides better control;
- more streamlined workflow (less redundancy);
- positive impact on costs;
- positive impact on lead time;
- positive impact on reliability;
- positive impact on delivery precision;
- positive impact on transparency;
- positive impact on flexibility;
- positive impact on quality management.
Policy implications
The five demonstrations have in our opinion supported the European transport policy by focusing on how to efficiently organise and manage multimodal transports. By introducing advanced systems for easy creation of complex transport chains and facilitate efficient communication with many service providers, the complexity of organising both the physical transport and the information flows is greatly reduced. The introduction of advanced tracking technology and automatic simulation and service profiling, will assist in reducing waiting time along the chain and thereby increase the competitiveness of such chains. This way the project has promoted technology that supports a shift from single modal "only truck" transport to multimodal transport utilising train, inland waterways and ocean transport.