In Europe, several projects investigated management systems designed to improve the operating efficiency of carriers. Centralized route planning systems reduced vehicle travel distances 18 percent and decreased travel time 14 percent.
Date Posted
12/01/2008
Identifier
2008-B00565
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Telematics Applications Programme - Transport Areas' Results (4th Funding Programme)

Summary Information

This report summarizes the evaluation results for many ITS projects implemented in Europe between 1994 and 1998. The report describes the benefits with few details of the implementations or the context of the results; however, it references many different projects by name, and evaluation reports for each can be found elsewhere on the Telematics Application Programme -Transport Sector web page (see source reference information contained in the Source box).

Results

One important sub-area investigated within freight intermodality was centralized route planning. The objective of centralized route planning is to save costs and to reduce emissions by driving fewer kilometers and by increasing the load factor through cooperation in trip planning and execution. Individual carriers will combine their orders in specific peripheral regions with the orders of other carriers. By joining them, they are able to reduce the transportation costs per order and to increase the customer service level. Whether or not an order is included in this co-operation arrangement is the individual decision of the participating carriers. This system uses structured messages, with the planning results automatically being sent back to the participants.

Centralized route planning can improve the operating efficiency of carriers. To identify the commercial impacts for the application, a feasibility study was undertaken. The analysis was based on every trip the individual companies made to and from Belgium and Luxembourg over one month. Four companies had 1,023 orders during the month (789 metric tons). The cost/benefit analysis is based on the total operations, not only on the distribution portion. Differences in the size of consignments led to a necessary use of different vehicles and, as a result, to a less optimal load factor. Also, because of organizational problems and the use of less experienced drivers, the anticipated high savings were not reached in total.
  • Benefits of the systems include a 30 percent reduction in order processing time and a similar reduction in the delay experienced due to order processing errors.
  • A centralized route planning system resulted in an 18 percent reduction in the distance traveled by vehicles and a 14 percent time savings. Evaluation analysis showed an extra saving of about 10 percent would be possible. This resulted in an average cost saving for distribution of 16 percent.
Goal Areas