Sharing assets (information flows, vehicles or warehouses) can promote efficiency in resource management for logistic activities. One individual enterprise, or several of them, can benefit from this sharing of assets. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have facilitated asset-sharing, by decreasing information costs and providing platforms where various actors can share and trade their assets. From an environmental point of view, sharing assets can increase logistic efficiencies, for instance by increasing the occupancy rate of vehicles. Mode shift towards less carbon intensive modes is also a possibility where the bundling of several companies freight creates a viably-sized traffic flow for a rail/intermodal service. Ultimately, improvements that lead to load consolidation can reduce the number of trips required to deliver products, thus reducing the amount of emissions linked to logistic activities.
Asset sharing can also bring additional benefits. Costs for enterprises can be reduced by increasing efficiencies, for instance by decreasing fuel consumption and requiring less infrastructure (e.g. warehousing). Improvements linked to asset sharing measures will be dependent on the types of activities led by the enterprises that decide to share assets. As an illustration, it will be harder to share transport assets between one enterprise transporting food and another one transporting industrial goods because of the difference in stocking needs for these products, i.e. need product compatibility. Though combining products of different density could also be desirable to make it possible to reach vehicle weight and volumetric limits simultaneously.
Governments may need to consider appropriate competition regulation to facilitate such asset sharing and may need to consider how such actions could be enabled (for example through third party's digital platforms).
Asset sharing and collaboration taken to its maximum potential could lead to the Physical Internet (PI): an open, shared global logistics system based on a physical application of the principles of the digital internet. In this scenario, there are would no longer be individual logistics networks each operated by one transport service provider, but rather one global transport network using shared hubs. Competition between companies is focused on products not logistics and supply chains. Such a system would require new standardised modular packaging units, common protocol and tools, shared logistics and digital assets. The migration path from logistics systems as they are currently structured, financed and regulated to the PI is still uncertain.
Asset sharing for the pooling of freight resources has been linked to CO2 mitigation benefits. In one UK study, reductions of up to 40% were observed.
EU CO3 project generated case study estimates of CO2 savings from horizontal collaboration above 15%. Also, UK Starfish projects modelling impact of multi-lateral collaboration on CO2 emissions of around 14%. In Bogota, a collaborative network of shared delivery routes and depot infrastructure is seen to be linked to a reduction of travel distances and related CO2 emissions of more than 25% compared to a non-collaborative scenario.
The cost linked to asset-sharing depends on the type of asset that is being shared. Sharing infrastructure, for instance consolidation centres, entails costs for the construction of logistics facilities, as well as for its maintenance. Although most of this infrastructure to be shared is already in use and sharing would imply a decrease in the amount of space and respective costs each company now has to bear.
Costs can either be borne by local/national authorities, or by enterprises. Beyond vehicle purchasing and maintenance costs, transport costs can also include the costs linked to reallocating shipments from various routes to fewer ones in order to increase efficiency. Actions aiming at increasing truck load factors by sharing truck space for various deliveries can come at the cost of delivery times - i.e. may have to relax just-in-time replenishment which might increase inventory levels and reduce manufacturing productivity. This can entail costs for enterprises. Collaboration between different enterprises can also be linked to costs for restructuring internal operations structures and processes. This can be linked, for instance, to an increase in staffing numbers and space for inventory.
In an example in Luxembourg, the mutualisation of freight assets led to an increase in 3% of staff in participating enterprises to be able to adapt to the inner logistical changes. Additional staff was also recruited to run the logistical ‘control towers’ that major companies now use to centrally manage their transport operations. Unilever’s Ultralogistik control tower in Katowice is such an example, with reported CO2 savings.
For digitally promoted platforms, same as for infrastructure, the creation of the application comes at the cost of the creation and the maintenance of the platform. A final cost could be linked to the need to be ready to share inner enterprise information on systems that are not fully controlled by the enterprise itself. This might be linked to security issues. Unwillingness to share operational data has traditionally been one of the main barriers to logistics asset sharing. Cloud computing and the use of third-party ‘trustees’ or ‘supply chain orchestrators’ can help to overcome this barrier.
The sharing of assets can be linked to a decrease in transport costs for participant enterprises. In Lyon, distance savings linked to the pooling of resources have led to an average fuel savings of 18%. Also in Lyon, productivity has been increased by the optimised routes linked to shared data. Average time gains in the city have been around 11%. Other, hard to quantify benefits are linked to regulation benefits. For authorities, data exchange provides a new regulation tool, enabling the diversion of a sizable portion of traffic outside of congested areas.
Sharing can also lead to cost reduction, the Starfish project estimated this to go up to 17%, while in the EU ECO3 project transport cost savings would be around 10-15%.
The most common concerns about horizontal collaboration / logistics asset sharing have to do with unfair distribution of the costs and benefits, infringement of competition rules and anti-trust regulation, logistic service providers (LSPs) fearing ‘cartelisation’ by shippers and longer term stability of the sharing arrangement.
Optimising freight activities by sharing multi-modal routes can also be environmentally viable, in some analysed cases, but overly expensive. In France, using trains as a form of asset sharing for groups of enterprises that have major flows in the country (more than 600 pallets/week), could be almost twice as expensive as not having collaboration. At the same time, setting a platform in an area where there was none before could disrupt local logistics. Platforms with enterprises of different sizes which were not used to work together in the past can be particularly difficult for smaller enterprises. These would have less agency to affect optimal route choice than bigger enterprises, with a larger fleet.
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