Jos van hillegersberg blog taking logistics to the next level opmaak

Taking logistics to the next level Impression of the Midterm Conference NWO Logistics Community (4-12-2017) by Jos van Hillegersberg, Professor of Business Information Systems at the University of Twente and chairman of the programme committee of TKI Dinalog, Logistics sector

The NWO Midterm Conference on Logistics on December 4th, 2017, gave a great overview of the current state of a range of ongoing and recently completed projects. The organizers did an excellent job visualizing the top-sector research themes as a ‘subway map”. I am a big fan of effective data visualizations and this is certainly one. Where I usually carefully pre-plan my ‘journey’, the organizers had asked me to do a ‘city tour’. I decided travel all the six subway lines and stop at random stations. It turned out to be a journey full of interesting and surprising stops and sights.

4c and 4c in the city

Albert Veenstra interviews Jos van Hillegersberg

The concept of a full 4c with optimal data sharing and community like collaborations is still a dream. However, it seemed that this dream is becoming closer to realization. When the stakes are high and the conditions are met, successes can be achieved. 4c in construction demonstrated promising results. Retailers had rediscovered the VMI concept within a 4c setting. The presenters warned to look at the facts and not follow the hype. “while there is a lot of talk on congestion in cities as a result of express packages, the large volumes are really waste, food and construction”.

There was a promising focus on sustainability and how to make this the core goal of 4c. The discussion also raised some more fundamental issues. Do we really want to sustain an increasing number of SKUs? When efficiency alone does not justify investments in city consolidation centers, should we take more drastic measures?”

Trade Compliance Trade compliance is clearly not just about making the supply chain smart from a logistics perspective. It is a global challenge. Rules and regulations have a deep impact on the game. “VAT often kills competitiveness”. Information sharing between government, semi-government and private sector across borders is eminent but seldom common practice. “The flow is very complex.

There are many global trade platforms that are not willing to share information”.

Human Capital Increasingly the human capital agenda is gaining importance. Current shortages of qualified personnel, and the need of current personnel to learn about new concepts and technologies, drives this. Participants agreed that novel methods and techniques are needed to train the workforce in an engaging and modern way. The technology is there but the use lags behind. “Games can be great conversation starters and have a high potential to have impact”. Here also there is a need for more sharing. “We need to make sharing of educational materials easy and straightforward”.

Synchromodality In addition to advanced algorithms, games and information sharing platforms, there was attention for pricing and dynamic pricing of synchro-modal services. There was consensus that pricing, reliability and risk should be more prominent in the studies into synchromodality. In this area a large gap between theory and practice exits. This needs to be bridged somehow the coming years.

A nice challenge for upcoming projects. It was encouraging to see that pleas were held to extend the synchromodal concept to a global end-to-end perspective. One participant noted that today “synchromodality is often applied to the least interesting part of the supply chain”.

Service Logistics “the Netherlands are among the global leaders in service logistics”. While there was no hard evidence for this claim, the recently won contract for the European maintenance of the F-35 fighter jets by the Netherlands strengthened the feeling that a lot of knowledge and competencies have been built up. A wide range of services can be viewed through a service logistics lens.

Volumes are often so high and current practices frequently ignore current condition, usage and historical data. Internet of Things will even further enhance possibilities.

Many conclusions can be drawn from my journey. Clearly, a vibrant set of projects is ongoing with many innovative results. Events such as this midterm conference contribute to the integration and dissemination of knowledge. Moreover, discussions between researchers and logistics experts brought lively debates and many new ideas and connections were built. From the tracks and plenary discussions some ways forward can be seen. The complexity of the logistics networks and supply chains is stunning. A wealth of new concepts and technologies is available and being explored in research projects in fruitful collaboration with practice.

We should not lose the bigger picture. We have to make sure both early stage and proof of concepts close to implementation are nurtured. There is a need to scale up and combine projects and build “living labs”, “field labs” and the like to assure visibility and provide realistic experimental settings. At the same time the agility to develop radically new perspectives needs to be kept. Exciting times ahead. I am looking forward seeing many of these ideas being taken to the next level.