Trans-Austria - Design, simulation and evaluation of multimodal, cross-company logistics models for a cooperative, regional transport bundling
Overview
Background & policy context:
A trend of the past to relocate cost driven production to Eastern Europe still continues in the automotive industry and its suppliers today. Transport intensity and the resulting environmental impact increases due to unchanged customer and supplier structures in Western Europe. Austria, due to its geographical position is especially subjected to a high amount of transit traffic, and faces increasing traffic volumes resulting in increasing emissions and environmental contamination. The research project Trans-Austria investigated options for transport optimization between old and new EU countries.
Objectives:
The research project “Conceptualization, simulation and evaluation of multimodal, cross-company logistic models for co-operative, regional pooling of transports“ (Trans-Austria) tries to develop solutions for the problem of the increasingly negative impact caused by cargo transports due to the emergence of new production facilities in Central and Eastern Europe. As a result of lacking traffic and logistical infrastructure, the additional transportation, that is often just crossing Austria, is mainly truck-traffic and therefore, has especially detrimental effects on people and the environment. By optimizing the material and transportation logistics, it is on one hand possible to shift certain traffic to alternative means of transportation (train, ship) and on the other hand by means of freight-pooling possible to avoid part of the road transport altogether.
The automotive industry with its geographically distributed production networks comprising system suppliers, component suppliers, parts and material suppliers is characterized through a high "transport-intensity" and has played a leading role in the buildup of new production facilities in Central and Eastern Europe. As an example, the cargo traffic between suppliers in Middle and Western Europe and Romanian component suppliers to the automotive industry in the Timisoara region, showcase solutions for the problem described above that will be developed. The presented solutions are supposed to carry the potential for an extension into different sectors of the economy or other regions.
Methodology:
Starting points of the chosen approach are the logistical processes and transportation chains of the originators of the traffic, the manufacturers and their suppliers. The recording and visualization of the structure and the requirements of the transport chains and a subsequent categorization and grouping into compatible process-clusters, is supposed to allow an estimation of potential for optimization and further supply the relevant data for a simulation model. This simulation model is a central tool for uncovering optimization potential. In combination with cost-factors, actual costs for existing transportation relationships can be derived, which allow the calculation of potential savings through consolidated shipments. Moreover, alternative scenarios for intermodal transportation can be derived.
Regional, co-operative pooling of transports is a new concept for the cooperatively operating logistics and transport processes. In the past, similar approaches failed due to insufficient consideration of the goals and utility functions of the involved partners and a lack of organizational bracing. Therefore, a model co-operative, cross-company shipping agency will be developed. This co-operative model will be supplemented by a logistics model, which will be evaluated with respect to economic and logistical criteria. All those models will be aggregated into a process and simulation architecture, which allows the random configuration of transport chains and which allows the conveying of the results of this project to different sectors of the economy or other geographical regions.
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