CO3 - Collaboration Concepts for Comodality
Overview
Background & policy context:
Consumer product prices are rising due to increased fuel and transport costs. Instead of trying to pass this increasing cost to consumers, manufacturers should try to collaborate and be more responsible to make their logistics processes more efficient. The CO³ Project will build upon this new trend of improving efficiency in transport through collaboration.
Statistics show that many freight vehicles are running empty and that the rest are partially filled to their weight capacity. An innovative solution to drastically increase the capacity utilization of the European freight transport system is collaborative transport: "carpooling for cargo". This will allow the transport sector to become more sustainable, in terms of economic, environmental, and social benefits. This mental shift is the idea behind the CO³ Project.
Objectives:
Collaboration Concepts for Co-modality, CO³ is a business strategy enabling companies throughout the supply chain to set up and maintain initiatives to manage and optimise their logistics and transport operations by increasing load factors, reducing empty movements and stimulate co-modality, through Horizontal Collaboration between industry partners, thereby reducing transport externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions and costs.
The CO³ consortium is made up of logistics specialists, manufacturing industry and transport service providers. The model framework with legal and operational guidelines for collaborative projects in the supply chain, will be part of their focus.
Methodology:
The 18 partners of the consortium in 7 EU countries will coordinate studies and expert group exchanges over a period of three years, and build on existing methodologies to develop European legal and operational frameworks for freight flow bundling, (WP2). The project will come up with joint business models for inter- and intra-supply chain collaboration (WP3) to deliver more efficient transport processes, increase load factors and increase the use of co-modal transport.
The results of the studies and expert group exchanges will be applied and validated in the market via case studies (WP4). The aim is to set up at least four different real-life applications of collaboration across the supply chain by using road transport, multimodal transport, regional retail distribution and collaboration for warehousing activities. We will also promote and facilitate matchmaking and knowledge-sharing through CO³ conferences and practical workshops to transfer knowledge and increase the market acceptance of the CO³ results. This will be done through discussions with a High Level Board of European Industry supply chain Leaders (WP5).
Share this page