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Freight transport is one of the major causes of CO2 emissions and congestion globally. For the past thirty years, policy attempts and research initiatives have been carried out to create modal shift to rail and waterborne transport. However, we still experience a system that is predominantly truck-based, and that does not exploit the full potential of the well-connected network and the deployed capacity. By aligning business models, operations, regulations, behavioural incentives, data management, and AI, we lead the transition to a sustainable and fair “matching platform” for composite services, defined as Freight Mobility as a Service (FMaaS).

The sector Ground, Road, and Water Construction is faced with a very dated infrastructure and a vast replacement task in the coming 20 years. This implies that there is now a great opportunity to make smart investments so that we get a better functioning and more sustainable infrastructure. Ideally, infrastructure is almost always available and can be adapted when the needs of the users change. A high availability can be realized by acting quickly when a piece of infrastructure breaks down. This will be studied from a service logistics perspective. Adaptiveness can be obtained by including multiple scenarios in the design of new infrastructure and building the initial infrastructure such that future extensions and changes can be made relatively easily and against reasonable costs. This will be studied from a robust design angle. Adaptiveness is about being able to use infrastructure for more years by being able to adapt the infrastructure to the new needs. This avoids that you have to build new infrastructure at that time. Hence, adaptiveness already contributes to the sustainability of infrastructure. In this project, we will also study other forms of sustainability: taking energy usage into account when designing new infrastructure, re-use of materials at the end of the lifetime, re-use of infrastructure elements (e.g., bridges) at other places when replaced by elements with other features (e.g., a larger capacity), standardization of infrastructure elements so that the same spares can be used at many places, and so on.

Low-income consumers at the base of the global pyramid paradoxically often pay more for their daily groceries than middle-income consumers in the same countries. Much of this paradox is due to the high fragmentation of the retail channel where they buy their goods, leading to high supply chain cost. Smartphone-based technologies can close this gap, reduce the cost of living for these low-income consumers, and continue to provide a livelihood to the millions of shopkeepers that serve them. Using granular transactional data of delivery vehicles, sales agents, and replenishment orders, the researchers study the impact of this rapid digitization.

De doelstelling van het onderzoek/project is om een neutraal (internet)platform en community te ontwikkelen om horizontale samenwerking tussen verladers te bevorderen en te faciliteren. Op het platform komen verladers in contact met elkaar en worden verladers ondersteund in het samenwerken bij de uitvoering van de supply chain processen. Hiervoor worden drie tools ontwikkeld: een matchmaking tool, een network matching tool en een order matching document. We noemen het project Compose. Compose heeft de missie om in gezamenlijkheid met verladers en indien van toepassing overheden, innovatie in de supply chain te creëren. De missie is om horizontale samenwerking daadwerkelijk tot stand te brengen door een faciliterende omgeving in te richten, en knelpunten te identificeren en weg te nemen. Dit wordt gerealiseerd door partijen bij elkaar te brengen, het proces te faciliteren en hier inhoud aan te geven. Nadat partijen bij elkaar gebracht zijn en synergie in horizontale samenwerking geïdentificeerd is, is een logische vervolgstap om dit ook operationeel vorm te geven. Deze vervolgstap (buiten scope van dit project) heet orchestratie, en vandaar dat ons project (wat de cruciale voorbereiding hiertoe beoogt) Compose (componeren) heet. Gegeven de behoefte aan horizontale samenwerking bij verladers en aan de andere kant de tekortkomingen van bestaande initiatieven willen EVO en Tilburg Universiteit (TiU) een voortrekkersrol nemen in het organiseren van platforms om horizontale samenwerking tussen (niet-)concurrerende organisaties te bevorderen.