Central European Network for Logistics Competence

Project Information

CENTRAL LOCO

Grant agreement ID: 15914

Project closed

Start date 1 June 2005

End date 31 May 2007

Funded under

• Sustainable Development, Global Change and Ecosystems: thematic priority 6 under the Focusing and Integrating Community Research programme 2002-2006.

Total cost € 80 000,00

EU contribution € 80 000,00

Coordinated by

INSTYTUT LOGISTYKI I MAGAZYNOWANIA
Poland

Exploitable results

Dissemination and exploitation of results of RTD projects among enterprises and research units operating in logistics and transport sector

Since Central Loco has been a networking project it had no direct scientific or technical results. It helped to establish or strengthen co-operation among partners in the region. Using various means of communication and dissemination (conference, workshops, regular newsletters) Central Loco supported stimulating dissemination of FP5 and FP6 RTD project results, created links between new Member States, promoted SME's and key industrial stakeholders participation in EU Framework Programmes, raised advanced awareness of current issues of European transport policy and stimulated international co-operation to create partnerships for future European research collaboration. The main activities performed during the Central Loco project included: 1. Launch of the project website in October 2005 (www.centralloco.net), which presents the project, its activities, planned events and reports from the organised conference and workshop. It also enables interested users to subscribe for a project newsletters and to get access to the project documents, such as presentations, reports, photos, lists of participants, etc. 2. Organisation of the first project workshop held in Prague (Czech Republic) on 7-8th November, 2005. During the first 2-day workshop titled "New telematic solutions in logistics" ten interesting presentations were held and discussed. 3. Organisation of the second project workshop held on 22nd February 2007 in Budapest under the title: "Problems and new solutions in logistics with special regard to Automatic Identification". The second workshop was to present new solutions in the advanced logistics especially with emphasis on RFID/EPC global system, as well as the objectives and results of the Central Loco project. The events brought together the representatives of research and business environment mainly from Central-Eastern Europe, so that they could start cooperation within new initiatives. 4. Identification of EU RTD projects in the field of logistics and intermodal transport. The database containing over 120 different projects in the field of logistics has been constantly updated. It is available in English and in Polish on the web site: http://www.polloco.pl/projects/index.php. 5. Organisation of the project conference. The Central Loco conference organised by ILIM took place in parallel with the Polish Logistics Congress 'Logistics 2006', one of the most important European logistics and transportation events, with great national and international participation of companies, institutes, governmental organisations, and others. The coincidence of these two events assured Central Loco conference with a great number of public, excellent advertising among the European institutions and enterprises. The Central Loco consortium prepared three thematic sessions. During the conference best practice solutions in different fields of logistics (i.e.: ECR, SCM, Reverse logistics, outsourcing, CRM, CPF, Reengineering, intermodal transport, e-logistics, etc.) were presented and discussed. 6. Regular newsletters were prepared by Research Institute for Transport (VUD) in cooperation with the other partners in English and four national languages. Newsletters were emailed to the subscribers registered on the project's website, as well as to the databases of the partners. Central Loco issued seven newsletters (in five language version). 7. Creation of opportunities for new projects among members of research and business communities and invitation of large numbers of companies to participate in Framework Programmes during organised events. The problems raised by the project affected all project partners, which were New Member States (Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Slovakian). At the beginning of the project they just started to function in the Common European Market, thus adding a European dimension to their problems. Central Loco provided its partners with more advanced knowledge and experience as well as EU expertise in order to support the Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Slovakian industries to conform to the European standards. Central Loco, thanks to the involvement of the European research centres into project's activities, created the possibility to share their knowledge and to establish cooperation links to involve research and industry sectors in the current stream of European work on transport system solutions. Project partners will continue activities for promotion of participation of research organisations and SME's in 7th Framework Programme and knowledge transfer from research to industry. The other countries following the Central Loco example should be able to set up their own competence centres, create national versions of the web sites and join the Central Loco network. Moreover, the Central Loco consortium has decided that after successful and excellent cooperation among the partners, they would continue and extend the Central Loco ideas and activities within a new BBC LOCO project under FP7. The consortium spread from 4 to 16 partners from Baltic Balkan Central Eastern Europe and the project area comprises now 14 countries, including 10 New Member States and 2 Candidate Countries, covering most of the East of the continent and beyond, form Estonia to Israel.