CREAM - Customer-driven Rail-freight services on a European mega-corridor based on Advanced business and operating Models
Overview
Background & policy context:
The CREAM project was set up to respond to the increasing demand for rail-based logistic systems and to support the implementation of change in the European railway area, initiated by European legislation.CREAM defined advanced customer-driven business models for railway undertakings and intermodal operators against the benchmarking business models of logistic service providers. CREAM analysed the operational and logistic prerequisites for developing, setting up and demonstrating seamless rail freight and intermodal rail/road and rail/short sea/road services on a Trans-European mega-corridor between the Benelux countries and Turkey/Greece. On this basis the CREAM partners developed different business cases which were successively integrated into an innovative corridor-related freight service concept.
Objectives:
The CREAM project aimed at developing an innovative corridor-related freight service concept that includes the following components:
- Innovative rail-based supply chains including intelligent rail and multimodal operation models.
- A quality management system.
- Interoperability and improved border crossing.
- Integrated telematic solutions for train control.
- Tracking & tracing of shipments and customer information.
- Rail logistics for temperature-controlled cargoes.
- New technologies for the transport of unaccompanied semi-trailers in intermodal transport.
All project developments were designed for a very challenging transport corridor. This corridor incorporates completely new rail infrastructure dedicated to rail freight, congested industrialised and rural areas and passes EU Member States, accession states and candidate countries. The transports considered involve different kinds of stakeholders including new entrant railway undertakings and customers from various market segments. The proposed solutions were field-validated in full-blown demonstrations within the lifetime of the project (2007-2011).
Methodology:
The objectives of CREAM have been transferred into an overall Science & Technology approach, which enables the project to achieve its objectives. The approach consists of appropriate research, training and demonstration activities, which are performed in logical succession to ensure that results of the RTD phase are communicated to managerial and operational staff (multiplicators) concerned prior to their field-validation during demonstration.
The project activities were based on the following research activities:
The objective of Research Activity 1 is to determine what kind of innovative rail freight services would be able to match the specific requirements of the logistics markets on the project corridor. In this respect the CREAM Project is committed to an integral view on rail freight service characteristics including a set of 'typical' rail performance features such as time-table, price, rate of punctuality or flexibility, the definition of appropriate rail production schemes as well as additional customer services like tracking and tracing information, road haulage services or intermediate storage of intermodal units. The result of RA 1 is a set of comprehensive templates on road-competitive rail-based supply chains, which could serve shippers and forwarders properly. These results are input to other research activities, in particular to RA 3, 4, 7 and 8.
Research Activity 1 is divided into
- RA 1.1 - Analysis of market requirements compared to the benchmark 'door-to-door' road transport
- RA 1.2 - Determination of templates on innovative rail freight services and supply chains
While RA 1 is scheduled to define appropriate business cases for rail freight services along the CREAM corridor, Research Activity 2 will investigate into the design of innovative business models and will develop a concept for transforming the currently applied model into a more competitive and customer-oriented business relationship. This work will have to distinguish two levels of rail service providers and their business models in question:
- Business model of railway undertakings: they may sell their services to shippers, forwarders, shipping lines, and intermodal operators.
- Business model of intermodal operators: they are used to incorporate two roles, the role of customers to railway undertakings and the role of logistics service providers to shippers, forwarders, road operators or shipping lines.
Research Ac
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