Transportation management in distributed enterprises

Abstract

The recent trend towards globalisation, with a tendency towards geographical distribution of manufacturing in distributed enterprises, has generally increased the complexity of transportation management. Other driving forces towards higher complexity in transportation logistics are the implementation of Just-In-Time principles, the explosion of Internet trade (including home shopping), a strengthening of environmental concerns, and the implementation of new legislation. Moreover, there is higher emphasis on customer service, timeliness, reactivity, and efficiency in the transportation function. We may safely conclude that there is a need for highly optimised transportation management practices at the strategic, tactical and operational control levels. Today, lack of planning and co-ordination is the cause of excess travel for commercial vehicles, with detrimental effects on economy and the environment. In distributed enterprises, these tasks (if supported at all) typically use isolated IT tools that cannot address the full problem, fail to address important constraints, cannot balance partially conflicting objectives, do not react to dynamics, and, cannot interact with the user in a timely and meaningful way. Recent advances in Information and Communication Technologies have enabled us to remedy these shortcomings. As a point in case, the GreenTrip Esprit project has developed a rapidly re-configurable, generic software tool for optimised transportation management. With GreenTrip as an illustration, this paper will describe state-of-the-art decision-support tools in transportation logistics, their underpinning technologies, and their possible impacts on business.