Final Report Summary - LOGINN (LOGistics INNovation uptake)
Executive Summary:
The freight transport logistics sector plays a vital role in the European economy. The value added and jobs generated by the sector are significant. Within the logistics sector, transport is one of the most prominent economic activities. In spite of cost of fuel, regulations and different available options road transport is still the most common mode of transport used with a share of around 40%, while the remaining 60 % is distributed among maritime (about 35%), train (about 10%) and other modes.
Transport is also the activity that highly affects the costs of logistics operations and has a high impact on the environment in terms of carbon footprint. The recent economic crisis and environmental threats impose us to reconsider our approach and adopt more sustainable solutions. Although the endpoint is not clear, we know that we cannot maintain the current situation, as it is not sustainable any longer.
There have been numerous initiatives, both at European and national level, to address the economic and social issues deriving from a congested transport, but, up to now, there are no real solutions. In general, the sector is living in a sort of dichotomy: on one side struggling to survive the regulatory pressure and the increased costs of labour and fuel and, on the other side, trying to find innovative or alternative solutions to overcome the challenges.
Innovative solutions and models coming from research in the field seldom have the adequate maturity level to be directly adopted by companies. In addition, it is difficult to have knowledge of innovative solutions, as the operators in the filed do not have the means to reach or understand the information, which is widely dispersed over the web.
Emerging technologies, such as 3D printing, Internet of Things, BigData and other, claim to be potentially useful in Logistics, providing innovations that could help the sector addressing the above challenges, but such technologies are not accessible as tailored solutions to fulfil specific needs of the sector and are not integrated in a comprehensive approach.
The gap between research and reality appears greater than ever, research depicts a world that does not exist yet, leaving the operators alone struggling with marginality, costs, regulatory pressure and day-to-day issues.
Nonetheless a critical situation can be seen as an opportunity, accordingly with recent economic studies recent innovations and technologies - specifically IoT, Open source, 3D-printing and Social Media - will foster the transition towards new economic models where marginality will not be the major driver. Although, such new economic models are not established yet, the role of Social Media is considered to be central.
In order to address the challenge and identify concrete and sustainable ways to foster the uptake of innovation, LOGINN idea was to use WEB2.0 approaches and technologies to set up a Social Media platform that could serve as a neutral space where stakeholders of the logistics domain - industry, SMEs, public authorities, investors and research organisations – can find information, discuss, promote, share their experience in relation with innovation in Logistics.
LOGINN put communication as the cornerstone of the innovation uptake and the LogisticsArena as the main communication channel. The LogisticsArena was not intended just as an additional PR channel, but was intended, and truly is, a sort of modern Agora where interested people could share opinions and experiences, and find useful information and tools to support their path to innovation in Logistics.
Through the LogisticsArena the project has made available innovative approaches and outcomes of research project in Logistics and the findings of the analysis performed by the project itself aiming at identifying barriers and possible drivers to innovation accordingly with the three dimensions: business models, logistics practices and technologies. Then we undertook a consolidation process in order to have a more comprehensive approach, not dependent from a specific dimension. This process led to the identification of KPIs that are at the basis of the Innovation Scoreboard to assess the innovation status, and the definition of the innovation Action Plan.
Although the LogisticsArena focus is limited to the results of research project in Logistics and the Logistics community is not uniformly digitally aware, nonetheless the results achieved by the project are significant and the LogisticsArena, the Innovation Scoreboard and the Innovation Action plan remain the concrete unbiased results of the project to support the Logistics community.
Project Context and Objectives:
Project objectives for the period
At the end of the project we can confirm that, although with the specific point of view of the project, all three objectives, have been achieved:
• Objective1 - Raising the profile and understanding of intermodal and freight logistics innovation, by identifying current and expected logistics market developments and defining their linkage to concrete real-life examples of logistics innovation (business models, practices, technologies) in terms of innovation drivers, critical success factors, barriers overcome and impacts achieved.
• Results – the projects has conducted a complete analysis of logistics innovation and related barriers under the three pillars, which has been documented in D3.1and D3.2 for the innovative business models; D4.1 and D4.2 for the Logistics practices; and D5.1 and D5.2 for the innovative technologies. In Task 5.3 the results from the three pillars have been put together to have a comprehensive view of the barriers and drivers and, through different approaches, supportive enablers have been identified. The final results are reported in D5.3 and its annexes.
• Objective2 - Identifying policies, regulatory measures, financial mechanisms and socio-economic aspects that are required in support of accelerating the development and diffusion of logistics innovation, by combining previous research on innovation management and uptake with real life experiences within the logistics sector.
• Results – besides the set of enablers identified and documents in D5.3 D6.6 Innovation scoreboard, combines the research results from Logistics sector and the findings from innovation management in a comprehensive tool to concretely support innovation uptake in Logistics. The process is further documented in D6.7 Logistics Innovation action plan.
• Objective3 - Encouraging greater involvement in and acceptance of innovations in the public as well as private sector, by promoting and disseminating the knowledge created within the project to a variety of relevant stakeholders (supply chain members, public authorities, investment funds, etc.) and by establishing synergistic links to complementary initiatives at a European level (e.g. Logistics4Life, IC Forum).
• Results – the LogisticsArena (LA) is the main dissemination channel developed and promoted by the project. As it will be described in the following sections the LA has become a reference point in the Logistics domain. Besides the synergies with Logistics4Life and the ICForum, the LA has established synergies and collaboration with other web platforms such as Supply Chain Brief.
The statistics related to the use of the LogisticsArena and its associated social media account show that the project has been successful.
Project Results:
WP 2 Virtual Arena
Progress towards the objectives
T2.1 - LOGINN core working platform - In this task the first version of the LogisticsArena was set up using consolidated technology (WordPress), an appealing interface and in compliancy with the Web2.0 paradigm that sees the user as the main contributor.
The LogisticsArena has been created to be the main channel of communication and collaboration. In order to support the LogisticsArena additional items have been developed. These items aimed on one side at defining the Branding of the Arena (web design of the LogisticsArena, logo) on the other side to have supporting material to distribute at events or meeting. to create something persistent, easy to remember and potentially viral.
Once the logo was designed we decided that the colours used and the logo itself should contribute to create the Arena identity becoming the leading theme in all other designed items.
For instance, the logo became the character of an animation video and printed on “flip-cards” as another tool to diffuse the message.
The video was presented the first time at the Transport and Logistics 2013 in Munich on special displays whose shape, once again, recall the Logo.
To assess the actual impact of the LogisticsArena, the access and usage of the website has been monitored through Google Analytics that provided information on the number and type of user who accessed the website.
T2.2 - LOGIN PLATFORM enrichment and maintenance - The Arena has been released at the beginning of February 2013 and since the beginning the consortium has worked hard to foster the participation of external stakeholders favouring the publication of different articles. To ensure the quality and compliancy of articles, the possibility to directly publish any content has been limited, each article needs to be compliant with the specific guidelines, available on the arena (http://www.logisticsarena.eu/become-an-author/) and be submitted through email to the coordinator. The article then has to be evaluated by members of the consortium and eventually revised, only then it can be published.
To maximise the impact of the LA, the associated social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn) have been structured as supporting tools capable of channelling the attention of different target groups towards the real content, which is published on the LA that is the main channel accordingly with the strategy depicted by the figure below and fully described in D2.2.
Significant results
The main results have been the implementation and maintenance of the core virtual arena made and the project web site available at Loginn-project.eu.
The links with the associated social media has been enforced so the messages disseminated through the LA have been further spread through the Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. The number of followers is constantly increasing and the traffic on the LA shows a growing interest from all interested different parties of the supply chain as it is shown by the statistics reported in D2.2.
WP 3 Innovative business models
Progress towards the objectives
The objective of WP3 was to identify innovative logistics business models that effectively respond to the challenges met in the latest decades because of globalization and increased customer demands for better service and lower cost.
Task 3.1 – Inventory of innovative Logistics business models - Within this Task, first the business model concept was placed into the “logistics context”, its basic properties were defined and a scheme for examining their basic components was selected (the Business Model Canvas). Following that, a number of business models considered as innovative were identified, by employing three streams of information: previous and on-going EU-funded projects, relevant initiatives of supply chain actors reported in the media, and relevant scientific journal articles.
Task 3.2. Identification of drivers and barriers for business model innovation market uptake - The aim of this Task was to analyse the major drivers having an impact on the emergence and future development of the innovative business models identified in Task 3.1 of the project, and to identify the existing barriers for their market uptake.
To meet the Task objectives, first a literature study on innovation diffusion was undertaken. The results of the review were complemented by interviews with representatives from both industry and academia with independent transport innovation experts being asked to provide their views on the discussed business models. The results have been interwoven and resulted to an identification of the drivers and barriers related to each business model. These results were finally synthesised into a list of barriers for innovative business models' market uptake.
Significant results
The main results of this analysis were the following:
• there is an increased need for a quality/certification/audit scheme when the business model involves non-conventional actors (e.g. customers, city dwellers) as part of the logistics process. Administrative and legal aspects also will have to be dealt with.
• innovative business models will require to a large extent the cooperation of logistics actors, thus the issue of defining transparent and commonly accepted gain sharing models is quite important. Still, a lot of guidance is missing related to how and when sharing supply chain resources are mutually beneficial for cooperating actors in the supply chain. This brings forward also the need for an orchestrator (neutral if possible) to safeguard the whole process and to be able to justify that no competition infringement occurs.
• one of the most frequently cited barrier is 'financial issues'. Although this might be valid in cases of high initial costs (which might justify a PPP), in general a business model to be truly innovate must be able to ensure (at least after a while) financial sustainability on its own.
• innovative business models currently represent a very small fraction of the whole logistics market, thus the lack of a critical mass represents a significant barrier affecting negatively their financial sustainability
• the majority of real-life pilots so far, refer to the introduction of well-defined technological solutions or even practices. Business models behind them remain a "black box" area and their impact is usually treated as "other qualitative impacts" with limited hard data to assess it.
• finally, it becomes clear that the more we move from pure transport logistics to supply chain management the opportunities for introducing innovative business models increase.
Business model innovation is not easy to be transferred as: first, the underlying logic (choices and consequences) of a business model are not easily identified, and secondly, by its very nature business model innovation aims at leading to sustainable, not easy to be replicated by the competition, competitive advantages. Even with those limitations though, transfer of innovative models can be facilitated by recognising and prioritising barriers to which action can be directed. From the barriers identified by LOGINN (see section 4.2.1) it is proposed that future action should be directed in priority to the following:
• Missing/limited hard facts: Pilots usually focus on ICT or process introduction. The business models behind them remain a "black box" with their impact usually treated as "other qualitative impacts“.
• Misaligned performance metrics: Innovative business models by their very nature have inter-firm (and firm-customer) cooperation as a prerequisite. For cooperation to be realised, alignment between the performance metrics of the involved supply chain actors is needed.
• Lack of gain-sharing models: How do we quantify and allocate the gains of cooperative business models among the various actors?
• Lack of appropriate legal framework: How can promote horizontal cooperation of supply chain actors and at the same time comply with anti-trust legislation? For example, how can we handle city-dwellers’ compensation & cargo insurance issues in the case of crowdsourcing?
Therefore, although companies are reluctant to adopt new business models we can affirm that without innovation on business models any technological advantage would not be applicable.
WP 4 Innovative logistics practices
Progress towards the objectives
The objective of WP4 was to identify innovative logistics practices in the freight transport industry and the drivers and barriers for implementation of such innovative solutions.
Task 4.1 Inventory of previous research on adoption of innovative logistics practices - The work on this task consisted of detailed survey of 63 European projects and the analysis of the identified innovative logistics practices.
The deliverable presents a collection of innovative logistics practices, selected according to their contribution to the four most critical areas of R&D in transport logistics: (1) Urban freight distribution; (2)E-freight; (3) Co-modality and (4) Intralogistics
In the best practice selection process, also aspects like availability of information and lack of results (mostly for ongoing projects) have been considered. Based upon these criteria, forty three different innovative logistics practices were identified and presented. All selected practices support innovation, efficiency and productivity in the logistics domain.
Task 4.2: Identification of drivers and barriers for logistics innovation adoption - The work of this task consisted of survey of more than 50 EU projects, 39 of which where chosen as suitable for detailed analysis. Those 39 projects involved some kind of innovative logistics practices related to transport industry. Evaluation template was created and used for collection of drivers and barriers by the partners involved in this task. With use of template and after the initial survey of the projects, drivers and barriers for implementation of those innovative logistics solutions were identified and further analyzed. The findings show four main groups of drivers: economic, legislative, socio-environmental and technical; all of which further are divided into subcategories. Five different categories of barriers are identified: the biggest, i.e. the most recognized one is lack of standardization on different levels; lack of cooperation is the second most recognized barrier with the highest potential for relatively easy improvements; financial barrier are no surprise in this survey; lack of information along the chain; and last but not least the state of infrastructure.
Significant results
Despite the fact that many logistics innovations have been introduced in recent decades, many of them have had poor adoption capabilities. The most recognized barriers for adoption of innovative logistics practices are lack of standardization, lack of cooperation, financial barriers, lack of information and technical infrastructure!
WP 5 Innovative technologies
The research shows that even though a number of innovative technological solutions are currently being developed (and most probably used in various sectors), the adoption and use within the logistics sector is still limited to pilot applications.
To that extent, WP5 addresses the third dimension of the LOGINN approach – i.e. technology innovation – and the relative barriers for adoption and large-scale deployment. The identified innovative solutions (within Task 5.1) provided the basis upon which Task 5.2 identified the barriers for (still limited) large-scale deployment of such solutions in the logistics operations.
Finally, task 5.3 provided a comprehensive list of barriers by taking into consideration the identified barriers within individual tasks 3/4/5.2.
Progress towards the objectives
Task 5.1 inventory of innovative technology solutions - The work includes the identified major innovative ICT solutions (and their use) in transport and logistics sector. The work focused on three different data source: (1) from Logistics for Life project; (2) a broader collection of previous EU funded projects and studies as well as projects, technologies and applications identified by survey and desk research (e.g. through the Internet). All of them were focused on ICT developments in the logistics sector and (3) a collection of scientific papers presenting innovative technologies and their uses in the logistics sector.
The task concentrated on assessing whether innovative technologies (or innovative use of consolidated technologies) and tools can support the Logistics sector in becoming more efficient and sustainable.
Task 5.2 Identification of drivers and barriers for ICT Innovation Market uptake - The work focuses on the identification of barriers for (not yet) adoption of the innovative ICT solutions identified in task 5.1. Taking into account the innovative technological solutions the task investigated possible barriers that exist in the adoption of the solutions proposed in general and especially for companies in the logistics sector.
In the barriers identification, a bottom-up approach was followed. Firstly, the potential barriers that have been identified in the bibliography and the research for each innovative technological solution were identified. Secondly the barriers of each technological sector were examined in order to check if they are relevant to the logistics sector. As a third step and for classification reasons the barriers of the technological solutions were classified into three categories in relation to the three pillars of LOGINN.
Apart from bibliography and the research in the solutions’ documentation, the Logistics Arena and its posts were also sources of barrier identification.
As far as the technological perspective is concerned the main barriers seem to be the immaturity of innovative technologies, the lack of reliability and accuracy of data transmitted the lack of standardisation and security concerns about the adoption of the solutions.
Task 5.3 Innovation alignment - The information gathered from this task as well as information from deliverables D3.2 (WP3), D4.2 (WP4) were used within the next task 5.3.
The work has been finalized within the second year of the project. The task analysed the relationships existing between the different barriers and drivers throughout the three dimensions of LOGINN (business models, logistics practices and technologies). The analysis was conducted by considering the barriers identified in the previous deliverables D3.2 D4.2 and D5.2.
To reach a consolidated view the initial sets were subjected to a three-steps process consisting of Classification, Semantic alignment and Categorisation. In the Classification step barriers have been classified accordingly with LOGINN dimensions and scope. In the Semantic Alignment step classified barriers have been clustered using a semantic approach to identify the categories. The final Categorisation step worked on the clustered barriers and defined the category which is to be considered as a unique barrier representative of the whole category; unique barriers are meaningful independently from the specific dimension in which they have been detected.
The result was an alignment of all identified barriers in a unique set of barriers, fully described in D5.3 that are listed hereafter:
1. Complexity in administration
2. Costs - Financial Issues
3. Deployment considerations - system governance and ownership
4. Fuel emissions
5. Immature technology
6. Infrastructure issues
7. IT interoperability
8. Labor considerations - workforce expertise
9. Lack of awareness
10. Lack of cooperation between stakeholders
11. Lack of legal/institutional framework
12. Lack of operational interoperability
13. Lack of Standardization
14. Lack of Trust
15. Limited/Misaligned evaluation data (e.g from pilot implementation)
16. Need for processing huge amounts of data
17. Privacy - Security issues
18. Reliability – Quality - Accuracy of data
19. Users & market size considerations
In order to validate the identified barriers, specific interviews and workshops were organised were the views of logistics stakeholders were collected. The task also introduced the solutions proposed by LOGINN through the Arena platform as well as a list of initial actions (innovation enablers) aiming at triggering the adoption of logistic innovation through the use of the identified solutions.
Significant results
The major outcome of WP3 is the set of unique barrier, drivers and enablers that, after being validated by APG members and local logistics Communities, have set the basis to define concrete actions to be undertaken in order to overcome the barriers and have been formalised in the Action Plan.
The process of classification aggregation and categorization did not introduce anything new, but it simply formalised a knowledge that everyone in the domain is, more or less, aware of. Moreover, another important aspect that has been demonstrated in D5.3 is the fact that these barriers can be considered from a general point of view and not simply related to one of the dimensions; however the awareness (of such barriers) did not allow, till now, to overcome them. This is partially due because commonly the focus is on one or two dimensions and seldom a more comprehensive approach is adopted.
To this respect, the added value introduced by D5.3 has been the identification of additional aspects (drivers and enablers) to be considered in order to overcome the barriers.
We considered as potential drivers the results coming from previous projects, to specifically look at their potential support to overcome the identified barriers. While for the enablers we took a higher approach that is described n D5.3 and has a focus on the LogisticsArena as main channel and cooperation platform. Although the identified enablers do not represent anything new, nonetheless it was important to introduce a new perspective, not to remain entangled in the same logic and processes that are at the foundations of current barriers and find enablers that fit well in the idea of the LogisticsArena and the new communication paradigms.
Moreover, through the mapping of the unique barriers against the drivers and the enablers, set the basis to define a concrete path to innovation through the Action Plan.
WP 6 Market uptake acceleration and dissemination
Progress towards the objectives
Most of the objectives have been achieved, but with some major delays. This holds for esp. for the deliverables based on 5.3. Since this was delayed, the work on the other were also delayed, but will be delivered according to the DOW description. In addition to the delay, we also have to report that the involvement of APGs was only partly successful. The reasons for this are many, please look at the corresponding deliverable.
Task 6.1 Stakeholders enrolment and management and coordination of LOGINN-APG - This aimed at establish relation with industrial users in order to discuss and increase the understanding of challenges and opportunities they phase in business modelling and technology deployment. The APG activities have been difficult to nurture, but some of the APG members have actively contributed to several documents with their constructive feedback. But even this, the overall conclusion is that the APG results and involvement was less than planned.
Task 6.2 Dissemination - LOGINN defined the dissemination strategy and material plan to be employed for the promotion of the LOGINN project and the key results and major outputs that will be produced during the project. The Logistics Arena serves as the pillar of this strategy. The activities undertaken within this Task focused on the dissemination of the project results. These were synthesized and incorporated into LOGINN's 2nd Newsletter which was circulated via the project's website and through the Logistics Arena. There have been several contributions to the Arena, and we have actively used social network for promoting LOGINN and innovation in logistics. This has created some awareness and increased the interaction with the industry.
Task 6.3 Workshop organisation - The main work carried out in this task was related to the organization of different workshops as well as the ECITL 2013 and 2014.We had 5 large workshops. The workshops organised in 2013 mainly aimed at collecting requirements and feedback on the identified solutions of WP 3-5, where as the main objectives of the activities in the second half of 2014 was to nurture a discussion on our main findings, and then discuss and derive relevant actions. The activities in 2015 were focussing on collecting feedback and validation of the deliverables.
Task 6.4 LOGINN Logistics Innovation Action Plan and Innovation Acceleration - Within the scope of this Task, LOGINN developed the 'Logistics Innovation Scoreboard', which can provide the basis for harmonising future efforts on monitoring the evolution of logistics innovation in Europe. The Scoreboard involves a limited but rather comprehensive set of indicators, following the logic and structure of the already established Innovation Union Scoreboard. For its development, relevant frameworks were assessed including 'EC's Innovation Union Scoreboard', INSEAD's ' Global Innovation Index' and OECD's ' Measuring Innovation'. For each of the three innovation dimensions (business models, practices, supporting technologies) a number of KPIs were selected covering all three innovation stages (innovation enabling, innovation management and innovation outcome).
Secondly, we also developed an action plan and describing the innovation accelerators. The action plan is focussing on the innovation has derived several actions for the different stakeholder groups. The work is based on the findings of drivers and barriers defined in D5.3 as well as on the input from the several dissemination events. Due to the delay in D5.3 this deliverable started much too late and is currently under finalisation, the same goes for the innovation accelerators. However, to some extent we reduced the delay a little by using more actively the interaction with ALICE as well as through our industrial contacts for deriving the guidelines.
Potential Impact:
The idea that LOGINN tried to bring forward was that knowledge and collaboration enrich all participating parties. The LogisticsArena was intended as the platform to support collaboration and spreading of knowledge with a specific focus on innovation uptake. Therefore the LogisticsArena focused more on creating the environment in which Logistic operators could share their knowledge and experiences. An important prerequisite for the success of such activities was to provide information about logistics innovations by collecting relevant content from EU funded projects and other sources. Moreover, the LogisticsArena as been the primary channel where to disseminate the project’s outcomes.
We also realised that a more comprehensive approach and a supporting strategy were needed (Figure above), especially considering the constantly increasing number of SM, social platforms and applications! For this reason we decided to use common SM (specifically Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) as resonance board for the content provided through the LogisticsArena and to support the launch of the LogisticsArena with a marketing campaign.
LogisticsArena Facebook page
The associated Facebook page targets a wider although not specialised audience. The page is used to give visibility to the articles and posts published on the Arena itself in order to attract new potential interested parties in the Arena. Besides that, the FB page is also used to give visibility to activities related to the LOGINN project (meetings and newsletters) and to link the activities related with ALICE. Moreover, FB is also the most appropriate channel to publish content not directly connected with project activities, but that can still channel the discussion on hot topics like innovation.
There are two sources of information:
• From the LogisticsArena - Content published on the LogisticsArena can be shared on the Facebook page by clicking the button under each published article/post. This action is usually performed by the authorised author on the LogisticsArena, but nothing restrain any other viewer to share a link of the article/post on any other FB page.
• Independent content - any FB user can post on the LogisticsArena FB page, which is public by definition. In order to prevent a misuse of the FB page, the administrator has the faculty to edit or delete posts, however we never had the necessity to use this feature since we haven’t experienced any fraudulent use of the FB page.
All Facebook posts generate an automatic tweet that is then published on the twitter page to be shared with the twitter community and listed on the Arena itself.
Facebook was the most successful SM activity within LOGINN. Each of the Facebook posts reached (and still reach because respective activities are continued after the LOGINN project) an audience between 20 and 200. This clearly indicates the relevance of the information for a considerable audience, which is also emphasized by the fact that the number of “likes” for the LogisticsArena FB page is constantly growing. In order to facilitate this audience for the LogisticsArena, a closer link should be established between both channels by posting information about LogisticsArena articles on the FB page. FB has been the most successful SM with 210 Likes that are still increasing.
LogisticsArena LinkedIn page
LinkedIn targets a more specialised (and limited) audience, the goal is similar to that of the FB page: sharing and promoting the LogisticsArena activities and in general to foster the discussion on hot topics in logistics. However, due to some peculiarity of LinkedIn it has been proved to be less efficient than expected. Specifically, for some unexplained rule, the content posted as new discussion by any member was put in quarantine without any alert to the administrator resulting in a limited visibility of the content itself until the administrator accessed the account to approve the discussion, sometimes with major delays. This reduced the usability of LinkedIn as preferred communication channel.
Also in this case we have two sources of information:
• From the LogisticsArena - Content published on the LogisticsArena can be shared on the LinkedIn group by clicking the button under each published article/post. This action is performed by an authorised user of the LogisticsArena that is also member of the LinkedIn group, however any other viewer is allow to share a link of the article/post on any other LinkedIn profile.
• Independent content – only members of the LogisticsArena group on LinkedIn can post on the page. As reported above, we have experienced some issues with this feature.
LinkedIn does not provide tools to automatically feed Twitter and this aspect has been another major constraint limiting the use of LinkedIn for the purposes of the project.
Independent content to be posted in the LogisticsArena LinkedIn channel was to a considerable extent provided by searching other relevant LinkedIn groups for content related to innovation management, innovative logistics solutions and other topics relevant for the LogisticsArena.
Emphasis was put on news and results from logistics projects, innovative solutions relevant for logisticians, and news of more general nature but related to logistics innovation. In some cases, relevant articles from other channels like blogs, e.g. http://cerasis.com/blog/ were posted. The aim was to produce interesting and relevant content such that an additional audience interested in logistics innovation would be attracted. In addition, relevant articles and information from the LogisticsArena were published in other LinkedIn groups, where applicable, and the LogisticsArena was promoted accordingly.
Furthermore, contact with the administrators of some other LinkedIn groups was established and an agreement on a mutual exchange of relevant information was negotiated. These activities included the following LinkedIn groups:
• TOC Events Worldwide (2428 members)
• World of Shipping (879 members)
• Supply Chain Management - We who love logistics (22548 members)
• H2020 Innovation Management (14102 members)
• H2020 Transport Research & Innovation (6163 members)
• H2020 ICT Research and Innovation in ICT (17125 members)
• Green Knowledge for Industry and Politics (342 members)
• e-Freight Forum (269 members)
• FP7 CASSANDRA (447 members)
• Intelligent Cargo Forum (188 members)
• Port and Terminal Professional (18169 members)
• WINN Project (60 members)
• Freight & Logistics Professionals (99944 members)
• Chemical Supply Chain & Global Logistics Network (5630 members)
• EU Eco-Innovation Action Plan (181 members)
• European Supply Chain, Transportation, and Logistics (2543 members)
• iCargo Group (32 members)
• IT in Logistics (6325 members)
• Logistics Consulting (39728 members)
• Logistics Network (92595 members)
• Maritime Education and Training - MET Network (10861 members)
• Operations & Supply Chain Group for Academics and Practitioners (25956 members)
• Port Community Systems (217 members)
• SCM Professionals (50199 members)
• Supply Chain - Insight - Share and Learn (11774 members)
• Supply Chain Today: Latest News & Trends (85865 members)
• The Logistics of Logistics (72458 members)
• WLF - World Logistics Forum (6669 members)
• MOBINET - The Internet of (Transport and) Mobility (86 members)
• Port Technology International Group (2323 members)
The LogisticsArena LinkedIn group has 63 members coming from Research (15%), ICT (10%), Consulting (9%), Operations (7%). It is to be noted that LinkedIn is considered a network for professionals. The numbers of members of some of the LinkedIn groups in the logistics domain listed above reach several thousands and in some cases up to 100,000. This indicates that LinkedIn in fact is an established means of information exchange in logistics. Consequently, we consider LinkedIn a promising method of communication for the LogisticsArena. Due to the limited resources in LOGINN it was not possible to promote the LogisticsArena in a very sophisticated manner in the abovementioned groups; thus we expect considerable impact of respective promotion activities concerning the LogisticsArena in these LinkedIn groups.
The figure below represents the growth of the LinkedIn group during the project period, although the tools provided by LinkedIn do not allow a complete analysis, it is clear that this SM has been less successful than FB, but this was not a surprise as LinkedIn is less successful in itself.
LogisticsArena Twitter account
Since the launch of Twitter on July 15, 2006, there have been many notable uses in a variety of environments. By the end of 2012, when LOGINN started, Twitter had around 185 million active users (named as MAU by the company). Only nine months before, they were “only” 140 million MAU, so this social network revealed itself as a promising way to reach a great number of potentially interested logistics-related users. LOGINN’s account was created in December 2012 (@LOGINNProject).
In this case we have different sources of information:
• Direct tweets from the LogisticsArena account
• Automatic tweets from the LogisticsArena Facebook page
• Moreover, through the LogisticsArena account, it is possible to Re-tweet tweets from other Twitter accounts that are followed by the LogisticsArena account by hitting the retweet button at the bottom of a selected tweet. In any case, all tweets are gathered and displayed on the LogisticsArena in the special Twitter container on the side bar.
Despite this great number of active users, in 2014 only 2% users were business-related (according to a brandcharts study). Unfortunately, this low number also may imply a low impact and fewer possibilities to disseminate LOGINN’s messages among potentially interested users.
Even if 609 tweets have been published during this time, only 120 followers are listed. The main reason might be that Twitter, as anticipated above, does better fit different types of communication and messages.
Some of the identified issues in relation with the low use of this tool are:
• Many companies still aren't yet seriously considering SM as a business function, whether because of a lack of information, fear, company culture or other internal reasons.
• It takes time to build a meaningful twitter community of followers, and time is money for most of the companies. With not much money around at the moment, some companies don’t invest enough time in the SM activities.
• In some cases, Twitter is seen as a marketing tool more than knowledge or inspiration source.
• As with any other communications activity, SM should consider the target audience to determine the best place for engagement. For some organizations the most efficient place to reach them may not be on Twitter.
In addition, when looking for professional contents or business-related information, other SM such as LinkedIn are preferred. In fact, these other networks allow users to contact other relevant stakeholders offering useful extra information.
Finally, a last possible reason of the low impact of Twitter account is that Twitter is very useful for live updates, but in LOGINN scope the immediacy is not so important as the quantity of information, so other sources are preferred.
LogisticsArena
Setting up a platform and pretending to serving the community of logistics operator was quite ambitious, but on this we have been successful, especially considering the time frame, although with the limitations deriving by addressing a sector quite composite and complex and usually reluctant to adopt new technologies and to share their experience fearing that this will imply to give-up part of heir market share.
LOGINN aimed to push the innovation uptake in logistics fostering the turning of RTD projects into real innovations. This necessity was detected since most RTD projects usually stop with a pilot project or the implementation of a prototype, not reaching the market and a real exploitation phases.
Due to this fact, LOGINN planned to support the logistics community in their innovation capabilities by providing access to a broader practice audience bringing together logistics companies, transport operators, stakeholder organizations and technology providers that are currently working with, or are interested in, adopting transport logistics innovations.
In this interconnected and digital world, one of the main ways to create this community is the use of SM. It is clear that SM such as Facebook and Twitter are motivating new forms of social interaction, dialogue, exchange and collaboration, which helps creating the sort of community of practice and knowledge that LOGINN aimed for and we intended to exploit thoroughly this means of communication.
Our vision was supported by the fact that in many different domains sharing knowledge and experiences have proven to be successful and beneficial for the involved parties and also that this approach is supported by funding organisation including the EU in many other domains (E.g. eGov).
Nonetheless, during the project we experienced considerable barriers to obtain relevant articles to be posted on the LogisticsArena; only few authors from external projects were willing to provide articles describing their findings. Thus, in order to be successful, the LogisticsArena needed to be officially supported by the EU and an official encouragement to provide articles about innovations in logistics to the LogisticsArena would have been beneficial. Furthermore, a stronger gratification mechanism (for the publication of articles) should be introduced in order to foster a higher participation.
To assess the actual impact of the LogisticsArena, the access and usage of the website has been monitored through Google Analytics that provides information on the number and type of user who accessed the website.
The LogisticsArena went “live” on February 4th 2013, from its launch till the end of the first reporting period, 2651 persons visited the Arena, with more than 30% of returning visitors indicates that the Arena is actually a good channel of information, the low bounce rate (ca 25%) indicates that few people happen to arrive on the Arena by chance, and finally the average number of pages visited (3.73) indicates an aware approach to the website itself.
Last but not least, the number of returning visitors is more than 60%, all these parameters were considered a good start for the Arena and definitely it can play a significant role as a communication channel for the logistics community.
Looking at the whole period, from February the 4th till April the 30th, we obtain the statistics depicted in the figure below with a total of 13.387 sessions performed by 10,486 users that viewed a total of 29.844 pages, with a page/session ratio is 2,23, an average session duration of 1.50 minutes and a bounce rate of 62,14 %.
It is interesting to note the behaviour of visitors channelled to the Arena through the SocialMedia channels, in orange, and the so-called loyal visitors, in green. Although they represent a small fraction of the total users, they spend more time on the site and visit more pages.
This support the strategy that was adopted to have SM accounts as resonance board for the content published on the Arena.
Associated Partners Group
APG has been a partial failure, although we had interested parties that participated on a voluntary base, overall we lacked the penetration we expected.
On one side we expected the APG member to act as promoters of the Arena, providing contributions and actively participating in the discussion, the other hands APG members were expecting some concrete benefits that were never clearly expressed.
Given the expected and the actual APG activities we can say that the project partially achieved its goals. More particularly, in principle the utilization of APG was to get feedback on the project results and get more insights on real cases with regards how introduced innovations were progressing, the driving factors, the barriers and what the final outcome of this was. This was done through detailed interviews and workshops with various stakeholders, where the consortium obtained deeper understanding of the problems in the real field. In this aspect the project achieved its goal.
However, the project did not manage to reach the targets with regards the participation level both from qualitative and quantitative point of view. More particularly the APG members were less than planned. Also the utilization of the LogisticsArena by APG members did not prove to be the main driver for knowledge exchange and best practices although the project supported it and strongly believes of its potentiality. We can say that it takes more time and more effort towards convincing organizations to participate in such initiatives.
As a conclusion we can say that although the small progress done with regards the APG involvement, the content presented in LOGINN major outcomes remains valid, having the feedback and agreement of a representation of all stakeholders. Both the LogisticsArena and the existing APG members could be used from other projects as continuation in order to progressively achieve high levels of Logistics stakeholders and a living community of knowledge sharing thus resulting in more successful and close to the market innovations.
Innovation Scoreboard
The innovation scoreboard delivered by the LOGINN project is a tool that can be used as a monitoring system for actions fostering innovation in logistics. It provides support for logistics companies to measure the degree of innovation within their company and within different innovation phases.
With the LOGINN Innovation Scoreboard, we aimed at offering a simple tool for which the companies can get an indication of the degree of innovation within their company and also be able to trace changes, i.e. after having inserted specific actions and monitoring their progress in the uptake of innovation.
In order to develop the tool, it was necessary to identify a common framework that could be used. Among the several available, we decided to use the Innovation Union Scoreboard (Innovation Union scoreboard 2014). The rationale behind this choice was that this scoreboard is regularly updated for all EU member states and also for different branches. Therefore, basing the LOGINN Innovation Scoreboard on similar KPIs, will allow users to assess and compare their results and innovativeness and also to draw benefits of finding out how better benchmarked sectors deals with innovation. LOGINN innovation scoreboard measures 20 different KPIs from the three dimensions. In our first prototype, they were considered all equally relevant, but the test results showed that this was not inline with the perception of the users, and that for different innovations and at different innovation stages, the weight of each KPIs might vary. Thus, in the final version, we introduced the possibility to weight the relevance. Although the tool has not been long enough in operation, the received feedback has been positive. Up to now we have had 423 downloads.
Innovation Action Plan
Scope of the Innovation Action Plan is to suggest a set of different specific to be undertaken to overcome the identified barriers and to strengthen the drivers. As stated previously, LOGINN has identified several barriers related to the uptake of the innovation. The action plan starts with these barriers, and has come up with suggestions how different actions can be implemented based on short, medium and long-term effect.
These actions are divided in the following classes:
Future Research Directions – gives an overview of where research and development is needed both on EU and national level as well as more what companies can do internally with their limited resources
Policy proposal-These suggest both action for what a company can do as well as from governmental level.
Proposed Financial Mechanisms. Proposes different funding schemes, tax reduction, Public procurement etc.. crowd sourcing (how to get private capital) in those cases that is need
Regulatory Measures proposal comprises actions that are related to standardisation, legislation and industrial agreements action. At the company level it is more related to quality management, which can be carried out within the company.
Innovation management
These actions are developed mostly for company purpose. They give guidelines on how companies could prepare the system to be more innovation friendly and how to include the employers and customer where appropriate. It also comprises actions that the state and EU can implement in order to push innovation from their research projects in a better way. This is often related to the marketing and advertisement, but also to single information access etc.
For each of these proposals, we have developed main recommendation and implementation guidelines.
In a second step, the action plan takes the 4 main proposals and the instruments to be used for implementing and apply that on the identified barriers. Thus for each of the barriers we have developed specific actions that can be inserted both at the company as well as on governmental level.
Furthermore, the impact of the applications of the actions needs to be measureable. Thus, in order to be monitor the impact, the companies can connect the actions they select with the KPIs defined in the scoreboard.
The action plan in it new version provides guidelines for how companies can foster innovation and also educate their workforce to be open to innovation. Secondly, it provides guidelines for quality ensuring and also for knowledge capturing. From a societal point of view, the action plan has analysed the current instruments that are already offered and how these can be applied for each of the different barriers.
ollaboration with ALICE
LOGINN as a project was requested to establish a good cooperation with the ALICE technology platform. The technology platform had its origin in the WINN project. Even since negotiation phase for both projects there was a clear wish to have a close cooperation since the two projects cover different aspects of the technology and business model development in logistics. In order to foster an active and concrete cooperation, LOGINN offered to set-up a personalised section of the Arena to host the discussion on ALICE’s objectives, initiatives and findings. An ad-hoc digital forum was developed but, after the initial communication, it has never been used.
It is obvious that this had the potential to turn out as a win—win situation. LOGINN would have been able to reach a broader audience for the SM studies, while ALICE (or WINN for that matter) could have gained additional visibility via SM Channels. These are now the exact shortcomings in both projects! The findings of LOGINN could only be validated in the ECITL with a small community, while at the same time ALICE until now has no real implementation and representation in the SM space.
Moreover, initially LOGINN was officially invited to take part in ALICE, in fact one or more persons for each of the ALICE working groups were appointed to represent LOGINN as a project, they have been actively participating in the different workshops and events that have been organised by ALICE (e.g. Paris , Hamburg, Bruxelles, Schiphol).
Such workshops and events did cover many interesting topics related to the objectives of LOGINN and the participants from LOGINN brought the results to be further discussed within LOGINN consortium.
However, the feeling is that the contribution of LOGINN as a project was not reflected.
Although the workshops and events were very well planned and prepared, quite often the open discussions never took place as if the statements and conclusions were decided a-priori and that the role of participants was just to approve them, without being given the real opportunity to bring own knowledge and own opinions to the table. E.g. the discussion on the “Common Framework for Logistics”, promoted and develop by several partners of various logistics projects, was never taken up. Although it is obvious that such a framework could, in a short time frame, support the integration of various island solutions in order to come up with end-to-end holistic logistics solutions for the customer, combining commercial services and solutions from services suppliers all over Europe, thus be the first step to pave the way to the implementation of the Physical Internet.
This was frustrating as ALICE is given an important role in shaping the future of the logistics industry and since many of the LOGINN partners are very competent in that respect.
In any case, the results from the ALICE workshops and events have served as starting point for many good discussions in LOGINN and the overall feeling is that the LOGINN results have improved thanks to the cooperation with ALICE.
Events
The consortium members worked hard to maximise the impact through the participation to numerous events where the project objectives and outcomes have been promoted and the use of the LogisticsArena as major collaboration channel has been encouraged.
Classical Dissemination activities were carried out through the participation to numerous events and conferences where LOGINN was present with dedicated booth and /or with poster or paper presentations.
Where possible Open sessions and workshops have been organised in order to foster an open discussion among stakeholders with the major objective to present the results derived by the project and have them validated by the participants.
List of Websites:
www.loginn-project.eu
www.logisticsArena.eu
margherita.forcolin@cetim.org
The freight transport logistics sector plays a vital role in the European economy. The value added and jobs generated by the sector are significant. Within the logistics sector, transport is one of the most prominent economic activities. In spite of cost of fuel, regulations and different available options road transport is still the most common mode of transport used with a share of around 40%, while the remaining 60 % is distributed among maritime (about 35%), train (about 10%) and other modes.
Transport is also the activity that highly affects the costs of logistics operations and has a high impact on the environment in terms of carbon footprint. The recent economic crisis and environmental threats impose us to reconsider our approach and adopt more sustainable solutions. Although the endpoint is not clear, we know that we cannot maintain the current situation, as it is not sustainable any longer.
There have been numerous initiatives, both at European and national level, to address the economic and social issues deriving from a congested transport, but, up to now, there are no real solutions. In general, the sector is living in a sort of dichotomy: on one side struggling to survive the regulatory pressure and the increased costs of labour and fuel and, on the other side, trying to find innovative or alternative solutions to overcome the challenges.
Innovative solutions and models coming from research in the field seldom have the adequate maturity level to be directly adopted by companies. In addition, it is difficult to have knowledge of innovative solutions, as the operators in the filed do not have the means to reach or understand the information, which is widely dispersed over the web.
Emerging technologies, such as 3D printing, Internet of Things, BigData and other, claim to be potentially useful in Logistics, providing innovations that could help the sector addressing the above challenges, but such technologies are not accessible as tailored solutions to fulfil specific needs of the sector and are not integrated in a comprehensive approach.
The gap between research and reality appears greater than ever, research depicts a world that does not exist yet, leaving the operators alone struggling with marginality, costs, regulatory pressure and day-to-day issues.
Nonetheless a critical situation can be seen as an opportunity, accordingly with recent economic studies recent innovations and technologies - specifically IoT, Open source, 3D-printing and Social Media - will foster the transition towards new economic models where marginality will not be the major driver. Although, such new economic models are not established yet, the role of Social Media is considered to be central.
In order to address the challenge and identify concrete and sustainable ways to foster the uptake of innovation, LOGINN idea was to use WEB2.0 approaches and technologies to set up a Social Media platform that could serve as a neutral space where stakeholders of the logistics domain - industry, SMEs, public authorities, investors and research organisations – can find information, discuss, promote, share their experience in relation with innovation in Logistics.
LOGINN put communication as the cornerstone of the innovation uptake and the LogisticsArena as the main communication channel. The LogisticsArena was not intended just as an additional PR channel, but was intended, and truly is, a sort of modern Agora where interested people could share opinions and experiences, and find useful information and tools to support their path to innovation in Logistics.
Through the LogisticsArena the project has made available innovative approaches and outcomes of research project in Logistics and the findings of the analysis performed by the project itself aiming at identifying barriers and possible drivers to innovation accordingly with the three dimensions: business models, logistics practices and technologies. Then we undertook a consolidation process in order to have a more comprehensive approach, not dependent from a specific dimension. This process led to the identification of KPIs that are at the basis of the Innovation Scoreboard to assess the innovation status, and the definition of the innovation Action Plan.
Although the LogisticsArena focus is limited to the results of research project in Logistics and the Logistics community is not uniformly digitally aware, nonetheless the results achieved by the project are significant and the LogisticsArena, the Innovation Scoreboard and the Innovation Action plan remain the concrete unbiased results of the project to support the Logistics community.
Project Context and Objectives:
Project objectives for the period
At the end of the project we can confirm that, although with the specific point of view of the project, all three objectives, have been achieved:
• Objective1 - Raising the profile and understanding of intermodal and freight logistics innovation, by identifying current and expected logistics market developments and defining their linkage to concrete real-life examples of logistics innovation (business models, practices, technologies) in terms of innovation drivers, critical success factors, barriers overcome and impacts achieved.
• Results – the projects has conducted a complete analysis of logistics innovation and related barriers under the three pillars, which has been documented in D3.1and D3.2 for the innovative business models; D4.1 and D4.2 for the Logistics practices; and D5.1 and D5.2 for the innovative technologies. In Task 5.3 the results from the three pillars have been put together to have a comprehensive view of the barriers and drivers and, through different approaches, supportive enablers have been identified. The final results are reported in D5.3 and its annexes.
• Objective2 - Identifying policies, regulatory measures, financial mechanisms and socio-economic aspects that are required in support of accelerating the development and diffusion of logistics innovation, by combining previous research on innovation management and uptake with real life experiences within the logistics sector.
• Results – besides the set of enablers identified and documents in D5.3 D6.6 Innovation scoreboard, combines the research results from Logistics sector and the findings from innovation management in a comprehensive tool to concretely support innovation uptake in Logistics. The process is further documented in D6.7 Logistics Innovation action plan.
• Objective3 - Encouraging greater involvement in and acceptance of innovations in the public as well as private sector, by promoting and disseminating the knowledge created within the project to a variety of relevant stakeholders (supply chain members, public authorities, investment funds, etc.) and by establishing synergistic links to complementary initiatives at a European level (e.g. Logistics4Life, IC Forum).
• Results – the LogisticsArena (LA) is the main dissemination channel developed and promoted by the project. As it will be described in the following sections the LA has become a reference point in the Logistics domain. Besides the synergies with Logistics4Life and the ICForum, the LA has established synergies and collaboration with other web platforms such as Supply Chain Brief.
The statistics related to the use of the LogisticsArena and its associated social media account show that the project has been successful.
Project Results:
WP 2 Virtual Arena
Progress towards the objectives
T2.1 - LOGINN core working platform - In this task the first version of the LogisticsArena was set up using consolidated technology (WordPress), an appealing interface and in compliancy with the Web2.0 paradigm that sees the user as the main contributor.
The LogisticsArena has been created to be the main channel of communication and collaboration. In order to support the LogisticsArena additional items have been developed. These items aimed on one side at defining the Branding of the Arena (web design of the LogisticsArena, logo) on the other side to have supporting material to distribute at events or meeting. to create something persistent, easy to remember and potentially viral.
Once the logo was designed we decided that the colours used and the logo itself should contribute to create the Arena identity becoming the leading theme in all other designed items.
For instance, the logo became the character of an animation video and printed on “flip-cards” as another tool to diffuse the message.
The video was presented the first time at the Transport and Logistics 2013 in Munich on special displays whose shape, once again, recall the Logo.
To assess the actual impact of the LogisticsArena, the access and usage of the website has been monitored through Google Analytics that provided information on the number and type of user who accessed the website.
T2.2 - LOGIN PLATFORM enrichment and maintenance - The Arena has been released at the beginning of February 2013 and since the beginning the consortium has worked hard to foster the participation of external stakeholders favouring the publication of different articles. To ensure the quality and compliancy of articles, the possibility to directly publish any content has been limited, each article needs to be compliant with the specific guidelines, available on the arena (http://www.logisticsarena.eu/become-an-author/) and be submitted through email to the coordinator. The article then has to be evaluated by members of the consortium and eventually revised, only then it can be published.
To maximise the impact of the LA, the associated social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn) have been structured as supporting tools capable of channelling the attention of different target groups towards the real content, which is published on the LA that is the main channel accordingly with the strategy depicted by the figure below and fully described in D2.2.
Significant results
The main results have been the implementation and maintenance of the core virtual arena made and the project web site available at Loginn-project.eu.
The links with the associated social media has been enforced so the messages disseminated through the LA have been further spread through the Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. The number of followers is constantly increasing and the traffic on the LA shows a growing interest from all interested different parties of the supply chain as it is shown by the statistics reported in D2.2.
WP 3 Innovative business models
Progress towards the objectives
The objective of WP3 was to identify innovative logistics business models that effectively respond to the challenges met in the latest decades because of globalization and increased customer demands for better service and lower cost.
Task 3.1 – Inventory of innovative Logistics business models - Within this Task, first the business model concept was placed into the “logistics context”, its basic properties were defined and a scheme for examining their basic components was selected (the Business Model Canvas). Following that, a number of business models considered as innovative were identified, by employing three streams of information: previous and on-going EU-funded projects, relevant initiatives of supply chain actors reported in the media, and relevant scientific journal articles.
Task 3.2. Identification of drivers and barriers for business model innovation market uptake - The aim of this Task was to analyse the major drivers having an impact on the emergence and future development of the innovative business models identified in Task 3.1 of the project, and to identify the existing barriers for their market uptake.
To meet the Task objectives, first a literature study on innovation diffusion was undertaken. The results of the review were complemented by interviews with representatives from both industry and academia with independent transport innovation experts being asked to provide their views on the discussed business models. The results have been interwoven and resulted to an identification of the drivers and barriers related to each business model. These results were finally synthesised into a list of barriers for innovative business models' market uptake.
Significant results
The main results of this analysis were the following:
• there is an increased need for a quality/certification/audit scheme when the business model involves non-conventional actors (e.g. customers, city dwellers) as part of the logistics process. Administrative and legal aspects also will have to be dealt with.
• innovative business models will require to a large extent the cooperation of logistics actors, thus the issue of defining transparent and commonly accepted gain sharing models is quite important. Still, a lot of guidance is missing related to how and when sharing supply chain resources are mutually beneficial for cooperating actors in the supply chain. This brings forward also the need for an orchestrator (neutral if possible) to safeguard the whole process and to be able to justify that no competition infringement occurs.
• one of the most frequently cited barrier is 'financial issues'. Although this might be valid in cases of high initial costs (which might justify a PPP), in general a business model to be truly innovate must be able to ensure (at least after a while) financial sustainability on its own.
• innovative business models currently represent a very small fraction of the whole logistics market, thus the lack of a critical mass represents a significant barrier affecting negatively their financial sustainability
• the majority of real-life pilots so far, refer to the introduction of well-defined technological solutions or even practices. Business models behind them remain a "black box" area and their impact is usually treated as "other qualitative impacts" with limited hard data to assess it.
• finally, it becomes clear that the more we move from pure transport logistics to supply chain management the opportunities for introducing innovative business models increase.
Business model innovation is not easy to be transferred as: first, the underlying logic (choices and consequences) of a business model are not easily identified, and secondly, by its very nature business model innovation aims at leading to sustainable, not easy to be replicated by the competition, competitive advantages. Even with those limitations though, transfer of innovative models can be facilitated by recognising and prioritising barriers to which action can be directed. From the barriers identified by LOGINN (see section 4.2.1) it is proposed that future action should be directed in priority to the following:
• Missing/limited hard facts: Pilots usually focus on ICT or process introduction. The business models behind them remain a "black box" with their impact usually treated as "other qualitative impacts“.
• Misaligned performance metrics: Innovative business models by their very nature have inter-firm (and firm-customer) cooperation as a prerequisite. For cooperation to be realised, alignment between the performance metrics of the involved supply chain actors is needed.
• Lack of gain-sharing models: How do we quantify and allocate the gains of cooperative business models among the various actors?
• Lack of appropriate legal framework: How can promote horizontal cooperation of supply chain actors and at the same time comply with anti-trust legislation? For example, how can we handle city-dwellers’ compensation & cargo insurance issues in the case of crowdsourcing?
Therefore, although companies are reluctant to adopt new business models we can affirm that without innovation on business models any technological advantage would not be applicable.
WP 4 Innovative logistics practices
Progress towards the objectives
The objective of WP4 was to identify innovative logistics practices in the freight transport industry and the drivers and barriers for implementation of such innovative solutions.
Task 4.1 Inventory of previous research on adoption of innovative logistics practices - The work on this task consisted of detailed survey of 63 European projects and the analysis of the identified innovative logistics practices.
The deliverable presents a collection of innovative logistics practices, selected according to their contribution to the four most critical areas of R&D in transport logistics: (1) Urban freight distribution; (2)E-freight; (3) Co-modality and (4) Intralogistics
In the best practice selection process, also aspects like availability of information and lack of results (mostly for ongoing projects) have been considered. Based upon these criteria, forty three different innovative logistics practices were identified and presented. All selected practices support innovation, efficiency and productivity in the logistics domain.
Task 4.2: Identification of drivers and barriers for logistics innovation adoption - The work of this task consisted of survey of more than 50 EU projects, 39 of which where chosen as suitable for detailed analysis. Those 39 projects involved some kind of innovative logistics practices related to transport industry. Evaluation template was created and used for collection of drivers and barriers by the partners involved in this task. With use of template and after the initial survey of the projects, drivers and barriers for implementation of those innovative logistics solutions were identified and further analyzed. The findings show four main groups of drivers: economic, legislative, socio-environmental and technical; all of which further are divided into subcategories. Five different categories of barriers are identified: the biggest, i.e. the most recognized one is lack of standardization on different levels; lack of cooperation is the second most recognized barrier with the highest potential for relatively easy improvements; financial barrier are no surprise in this survey; lack of information along the chain; and last but not least the state of infrastructure.
Significant results
Despite the fact that many logistics innovations have been introduced in recent decades, many of them have had poor adoption capabilities. The most recognized barriers for adoption of innovative logistics practices are lack of standardization, lack of cooperation, financial barriers, lack of information and technical infrastructure!
WP 5 Innovative technologies
The research shows that even though a number of innovative technological solutions are currently being developed (and most probably used in various sectors), the adoption and use within the logistics sector is still limited to pilot applications.
To that extent, WP5 addresses the third dimension of the LOGINN approach – i.e. technology innovation – and the relative barriers for adoption and large-scale deployment. The identified innovative solutions (within Task 5.1) provided the basis upon which Task 5.2 identified the barriers for (still limited) large-scale deployment of such solutions in the logistics operations.
Finally, task 5.3 provided a comprehensive list of barriers by taking into consideration the identified barriers within individual tasks 3/4/5.2.
Progress towards the objectives
Task 5.1 inventory of innovative technology solutions - The work includes the identified major innovative ICT solutions (and their use) in transport and logistics sector. The work focused on three different data source: (1) from Logistics for Life project; (2) a broader collection of previous EU funded projects and studies as well as projects, technologies and applications identified by survey and desk research (e.g. through the Internet). All of them were focused on ICT developments in the logistics sector and (3) a collection of scientific papers presenting innovative technologies and their uses in the logistics sector.
The task concentrated on assessing whether innovative technologies (or innovative use of consolidated technologies) and tools can support the Logistics sector in becoming more efficient and sustainable.
Task 5.2 Identification of drivers and barriers for ICT Innovation Market uptake - The work focuses on the identification of barriers for (not yet) adoption of the innovative ICT solutions identified in task 5.1. Taking into account the innovative technological solutions the task investigated possible barriers that exist in the adoption of the solutions proposed in general and especially for companies in the logistics sector.
In the barriers identification, a bottom-up approach was followed. Firstly, the potential barriers that have been identified in the bibliography and the research for each innovative technological solution were identified. Secondly the barriers of each technological sector were examined in order to check if they are relevant to the logistics sector. As a third step and for classification reasons the barriers of the technological solutions were classified into three categories in relation to the three pillars of LOGINN.
Apart from bibliography and the research in the solutions’ documentation, the Logistics Arena and its posts were also sources of barrier identification.
As far as the technological perspective is concerned the main barriers seem to be the immaturity of innovative technologies, the lack of reliability and accuracy of data transmitted the lack of standardisation and security concerns about the adoption of the solutions.
Task 5.3 Innovation alignment - The information gathered from this task as well as information from deliverables D3.2 (WP3), D4.2 (WP4) were used within the next task 5.3.
The work has been finalized within the second year of the project. The task analysed the relationships existing between the different barriers and drivers throughout the three dimensions of LOGINN (business models, logistics practices and technologies). The analysis was conducted by considering the barriers identified in the previous deliverables D3.2 D4.2 and D5.2.
To reach a consolidated view the initial sets were subjected to a three-steps process consisting of Classification, Semantic alignment and Categorisation. In the Classification step barriers have been classified accordingly with LOGINN dimensions and scope. In the Semantic Alignment step classified barriers have been clustered using a semantic approach to identify the categories. The final Categorisation step worked on the clustered barriers and defined the category which is to be considered as a unique barrier representative of the whole category; unique barriers are meaningful independently from the specific dimension in which they have been detected.
The result was an alignment of all identified barriers in a unique set of barriers, fully described in D5.3 that are listed hereafter:
1. Complexity in administration
2. Costs - Financial Issues
3. Deployment considerations - system governance and ownership
4. Fuel emissions
5. Immature technology
6. Infrastructure issues
7. IT interoperability
8. Labor considerations - workforce expertise
9. Lack of awareness
10. Lack of cooperation between stakeholders
11. Lack of legal/institutional framework
12. Lack of operational interoperability
13. Lack of Standardization
14. Lack of Trust
15. Limited/Misaligned evaluation data (e.g from pilot implementation)
16. Need for processing huge amounts of data
17. Privacy - Security issues
18. Reliability – Quality - Accuracy of data
19. Users & market size considerations
In order to validate the identified barriers, specific interviews and workshops were organised were the views of logistics stakeholders were collected. The task also introduced the solutions proposed by LOGINN through the Arena platform as well as a list of initial actions (innovation enablers) aiming at triggering the adoption of logistic innovation through the use of the identified solutions.
Significant results
The major outcome of WP3 is the set of unique barrier, drivers and enablers that, after being validated by APG members and local logistics Communities, have set the basis to define concrete actions to be undertaken in order to overcome the barriers and have been formalised in the Action Plan.
The process of classification aggregation and categorization did not introduce anything new, but it simply formalised a knowledge that everyone in the domain is, more or less, aware of. Moreover, another important aspect that has been demonstrated in D5.3 is the fact that these barriers can be considered from a general point of view and not simply related to one of the dimensions; however the awareness (of such barriers) did not allow, till now, to overcome them. This is partially due because commonly the focus is on one or two dimensions and seldom a more comprehensive approach is adopted.
To this respect, the added value introduced by D5.3 has been the identification of additional aspects (drivers and enablers) to be considered in order to overcome the barriers.
We considered as potential drivers the results coming from previous projects, to specifically look at their potential support to overcome the identified barriers. While for the enablers we took a higher approach that is described n D5.3 and has a focus on the LogisticsArena as main channel and cooperation platform. Although the identified enablers do not represent anything new, nonetheless it was important to introduce a new perspective, not to remain entangled in the same logic and processes that are at the foundations of current barriers and find enablers that fit well in the idea of the LogisticsArena and the new communication paradigms.
Moreover, through the mapping of the unique barriers against the drivers and the enablers, set the basis to define a concrete path to innovation through the Action Plan.
WP 6 Market uptake acceleration and dissemination
Progress towards the objectives
Most of the objectives have been achieved, but with some major delays. This holds for esp. for the deliverables based on 5.3. Since this was delayed, the work on the other were also delayed, but will be delivered according to the DOW description. In addition to the delay, we also have to report that the involvement of APGs was only partly successful. The reasons for this are many, please look at the corresponding deliverable.
Task 6.1 Stakeholders enrolment and management and coordination of LOGINN-APG - This aimed at establish relation with industrial users in order to discuss and increase the understanding of challenges and opportunities they phase in business modelling and technology deployment. The APG activities have been difficult to nurture, but some of the APG members have actively contributed to several documents with their constructive feedback. But even this, the overall conclusion is that the APG results and involvement was less than planned.
Task 6.2 Dissemination - LOGINN defined the dissemination strategy and material plan to be employed for the promotion of the LOGINN project and the key results and major outputs that will be produced during the project. The Logistics Arena serves as the pillar of this strategy. The activities undertaken within this Task focused on the dissemination of the project results. These were synthesized and incorporated into LOGINN's 2nd Newsletter which was circulated via the project's website and through the Logistics Arena. There have been several contributions to the Arena, and we have actively used social network for promoting LOGINN and innovation in logistics. This has created some awareness and increased the interaction with the industry.
Task 6.3 Workshop organisation - The main work carried out in this task was related to the organization of different workshops as well as the ECITL 2013 and 2014.We had 5 large workshops. The workshops organised in 2013 mainly aimed at collecting requirements and feedback on the identified solutions of WP 3-5, where as the main objectives of the activities in the second half of 2014 was to nurture a discussion on our main findings, and then discuss and derive relevant actions. The activities in 2015 were focussing on collecting feedback and validation of the deliverables.
Task 6.4 LOGINN Logistics Innovation Action Plan and Innovation Acceleration - Within the scope of this Task, LOGINN developed the 'Logistics Innovation Scoreboard', which can provide the basis for harmonising future efforts on monitoring the evolution of logistics innovation in Europe. The Scoreboard involves a limited but rather comprehensive set of indicators, following the logic and structure of the already established Innovation Union Scoreboard. For its development, relevant frameworks were assessed including 'EC's Innovation Union Scoreboard', INSEAD's ' Global Innovation Index' and OECD's ' Measuring Innovation'. For each of the three innovation dimensions (business models, practices, supporting technologies) a number of KPIs were selected covering all three innovation stages (innovation enabling, innovation management and innovation outcome).
Secondly, we also developed an action plan and describing the innovation accelerators. The action plan is focussing on the innovation has derived several actions for the different stakeholder groups. The work is based on the findings of drivers and barriers defined in D5.3 as well as on the input from the several dissemination events. Due to the delay in D5.3 this deliverable started much too late and is currently under finalisation, the same goes for the innovation accelerators. However, to some extent we reduced the delay a little by using more actively the interaction with ALICE as well as through our industrial contacts for deriving the guidelines.
Potential Impact:
The idea that LOGINN tried to bring forward was that knowledge and collaboration enrich all participating parties. The LogisticsArena was intended as the platform to support collaboration and spreading of knowledge with a specific focus on innovation uptake. Therefore the LogisticsArena focused more on creating the environment in which Logistic operators could share their knowledge and experiences. An important prerequisite for the success of such activities was to provide information about logistics innovations by collecting relevant content from EU funded projects and other sources. Moreover, the LogisticsArena as been the primary channel where to disseminate the project’s outcomes.
We also realised that a more comprehensive approach and a supporting strategy were needed (Figure above), especially considering the constantly increasing number of SM, social platforms and applications! For this reason we decided to use common SM (specifically Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) as resonance board for the content provided through the LogisticsArena and to support the launch of the LogisticsArena with a marketing campaign.
LogisticsArena Facebook page
The associated Facebook page targets a wider although not specialised audience. The page is used to give visibility to the articles and posts published on the Arena itself in order to attract new potential interested parties in the Arena. Besides that, the FB page is also used to give visibility to activities related to the LOGINN project (meetings and newsletters) and to link the activities related with ALICE. Moreover, FB is also the most appropriate channel to publish content not directly connected with project activities, but that can still channel the discussion on hot topics like innovation.
There are two sources of information:
• From the LogisticsArena - Content published on the LogisticsArena can be shared on the Facebook page by clicking the button under each published article/post. This action is usually performed by the authorised author on the LogisticsArena, but nothing restrain any other viewer to share a link of the article/post on any other FB page.
• Independent content - any FB user can post on the LogisticsArena FB page, which is public by definition. In order to prevent a misuse of the FB page, the administrator has the faculty to edit or delete posts, however we never had the necessity to use this feature since we haven’t experienced any fraudulent use of the FB page.
All Facebook posts generate an automatic tweet that is then published on the twitter page to be shared with the twitter community and listed on the Arena itself.
Facebook was the most successful SM activity within LOGINN. Each of the Facebook posts reached (and still reach because respective activities are continued after the LOGINN project) an audience between 20 and 200. This clearly indicates the relevance of the information for a considerable audience, which is also emphasized by the fact that the number of “likes” for the LogisticsArena FB page is constantly growing. In order to facilitate this audience for the LogisticsArena, a closer link should be established between both channels by posting information about LogisticsArena articles on the FB page. FB has been the most successful SM with 210 Likes that are still increasing.
LogisticsArena LinkedIn page
LinkedIn targets a more specialised (and limited) audience, the goal is similar to that of the FB page: sharing and promoting the LogisticsArena activities and in general to foster the discussion on hot topics in logistics. However, due to some peculiarity of LinkedIn it has been proved to be less efficient than expected. Specifically, for some unexplained rule, the content posted as new discussion by any member was put in quarantine without any alert to the administrator resulting in a limited visibility of the content itself until the administrator accessed the account to approve the discussion, sometimes with major delays. This reduced the usability of LinkedIn as preferred communication channel.
Also in this case we have two sources of information:
• From the LogisticsArena - Content published on the LogisticsArena can be shared on the LinkedIn group by clicking the button under each published article/post. This action is performed by an authorised user of the LogisticsArena that is also member of the LinkedIn group, however any other viewer is allow to share a link of the article/post on any other LinkedIn profile.
• Independent content – only members of the LogisticsArena group on LinkedIn can post on the page. As reported above, we have experienced some issues with this feature.
LinkedIn does not provide tools to automatically feed Twitter and this aspect has been another major constraint limiting the use of LinkedIn for the purposes of the project.
Independent content to be posted in the LogisticsArena LinkedIn channel was to a considerable extent provided by searching other relevant LinkedIn groups for content related to innovation management, innovative logistics solutions and other topics relevant for the LogisticsArena.
Emphasis was put on news and results from logistics projects, innovative solutions relevant for logisticians, and news of more general nature but related to logistics innovation. In some cases, relevant articles from other channels like blogs, e.g. http://cerasis.com/blog/ were posted. The aim was to produce interesting and relevant content such that an additional audience interested in logistics innovation would be attracted. In addition, relevant articles and information from the LogisticsArena were published in other LinkedIn groups, where applicable, and the LogisticsArena was promoted accordingly.
Furthermore, contact with the administrators of some other LinkedIn groups was established and an agreement on a mutual exchange of relevant information was negotiated. These activities included the following LinkedIn groups:
• TOC Events Worldwide (2428 members)
• World of Shipping (879 members)
• Supply Chain Management - We who love logistics (22548 members)
• H2020 Innovation Management (14102 members)
• H2020 Transport Research & Innovation (6163 members)
• H2020 ICT Research and Innovation in ICT (17125 members)
• Green Knowledge for Industry and Politics (342 members)
• e-Freight Forum (269 members)
• FP7 CASSANDRA (447 members)
• Intelligent Cargo Forum (188 members)
• Port and Terminal Professional (18169 members)
• WINN Project (60 members)
• Freight & Logistics Professionals (99944 members)
• Chemical Supply Chain & Global Logistics Network (5630 members)
• EU Eco-Innovation Action Plan (181 members)
• European Supply Chain, Transportation, and Logistics (2543 members)
• iCargo Group (32 members)
• IT in Logistics (6325 members)
• Logistics Consulting (39728 members)
• Logistics Network (92595 members)
• Maritime Education and Training - MET Network (10861 members)
• Operations & Supply Chain Group for Academics and Practitioners (25956 members)
• Port Community Systems (217 members)
• SCM Professionals (50199 members)
• Supply Chain - Insight - Share and Learn (11774 members)
• Supply Chain Today: Latest News & Trends (85865 members)
• The Logistics of Logistics (72458 members)
• WLF - World Logistics Forum (6669 members)
• MOBINET - The Internet of (Transport and) Mobility (86 members)
• Port Technology International Group (2323 members)
The LogisticsArena LinkedIn group has 63 members coming from Research (15%), ICT (10%), Consulting (9%), Operations (7%). It is to be noted that LinkedIn is considered a network for professionals. The numbers of members of some of the LinkedIn groups in the logistics domain listed above reach several thousands and in some cases up to 100,000. This indicates that LinkedIn in fact is an established means of information exchange in logistics. Consequently, we consider LinkedIn a promising method of communication for the LogisticsArena. Due to the limited resources in LOGINN it was not possible to promote the LogisticsArena in a very sophisticated manner in the abovementioned groups; thus we expect considerable impact of respective promotion activities concerning the LogisticsArena in these LinkedIn groups.
The figure below represents the growth of the LinkedIn group during the project period, although the tools provided by LinkedIn do not allow a complete analysis, it is clear that this SM has been less successful than FB, but this was not a surprise as LinkedIn is less successful in itself.
LogisticsArena Twitter account
Since the launch of Twitter on July 15, 2006, there have been many notable uses in a variety of environments. By the end of 2012, when LOGINN started, Twitter had around 185 million active users (named as MAU by the company). Only nine months before, they were “only” 140 million MAU, so this social network revealed itself as a promising way to reach a great number of potentially interested logistics-related users. LOGINN’s account was created in December 2012 (@LOGINNProject).
In this case we have different sources of information:
• Direct tweets from the LogisticsArena account
• Automatic tweets from the LogisticsArena Facebook page
• Moreover, through the LogisticsArena account, it is possible to Re-tweet tweets from other Twitter accounts that are followed by the LogisticsArena account by hitting the retweet button at the bottom of a selected tweet. In any case, all tweets are gathered and displayed on the LogisticsArena in the special Twitter container on the side bar.
Despite this great number of active users, in 2014 only 2% users were business-related (according to a brandcharts study). Unfortunately, this low number also may imply a low impact and fewer possibilities to disseminate LOGINN’s messages among potentially interested users.
Even if 609 tweets have been published during this time, only 120 followers are listed. The main reason might be that Twitter, as anticipated above, does better fit different types of communication and messages.
Some of the identified issues in relation with the low use of this tool are:
• Many companies still aren't yet seriously considering SM as a business function, whether because of a lack of information, fear, company culture or other internal reasons.
• It takes time to build a meaningful twitter community of followers, and time is money for most of the companies. With not much money around at the moment, some companies don’t invest enough time in the SM activities.
• In some cases, Twitter is seen as a marketing tool more than knowledge or inspiration source.
• As with any other communications activity, SM should consider the target audience to determine the best place for engagement. For some organizations the most efficient place to reach them may not be on Twitter.
In addition, when looking for professional contents or business-related information, other SM such as LinkedIn are preferred. In fact, these other networks allow users to contact other relevant stakeholders offering useful extra information.
Finally, a last possible reason of the low impact of Twitter account is that Twitter is very useful for live updates, but in LOGINN scope the immediacy is not so important as the quantity of information, so other sources are preferred.
LogisticsArena
Setting up a platform and pretending to serving the community of logistics operator was quite ambitious, but on this we have been successful, especially considering the time frame, although with the limitations deriving by addressing a sector quite composite and complex and usually reluctant to adopt new technologies and to share their experience fearing that this will imply to give-up part of heir market share.
LOGINN aimed to push the innovation uptake in logistics fostering the turning of RTD projects into real innovations. This necessity was detected since most RTD projects usually stop with a pilot project or the implementation of a prototype, not reaching the market and a real exploitation phases.
Due to this fact, LOGINN planned to support the logistics community in their innovation capabilities by providing access to a broader practice audience bringing together logistics companies, transport operators, stakeholder organizations and technology providers that are currently working with, or are interested in, adopting transport logistics innovations.
In this interconnected and digital world, one of the main ways to create this community is the use of SM. It is clear that SM such as Facebook and Twitter are motivating new forms of social interaction, dialogue, exchange and collaboration, which helps creating the sort of community of practice and knowledge that LOGINN aimed for and we intended to exploit thoroughly this means of communication.
Our vision was supported by the fact that in many different domains sharing knowledge and experiences have proven to be successful and beneficial for the involved parties and also that this approach is supported by funding organisation including the EU in many other domains (E.g. eGov).
Nonetheless, during the project we experienced considerable barriers to obtain relevant articles to be posted on the LogisticsArena; only few authors from external projects were willing to provide articles describing their findings. Thus, in order to be successful, the LogisticsArena needed to be officially supported by the EU and an official encouragement to provide articles about innovations in logistics to the LogisticsArena would have been beneficial. Furthermore, a stronger gratification mechanism (for the publication of articles) should be introduced in order to foster a higher participation.
To assess the actual impact of the LogisticsArena, the access and usage of the website has been monitored through Google Analytics that provides information on the number and type of user who accessed the website.
The LogisticsArena went “live” on February 4th 2013, from its launch till the end of the first reporting period, 2651 persons visited the Arena, with more than 30% of returning visitors indicates that the Arena is actually a good channel of information, the low bounce rate (ca 25%) indicates that few people happen to arrive on the Arena by chance, and finally the average number of pages visited (3.73) indicates an aware approach to the website itself.
Last but not least, the number of returning visitors is more than 60%, all these parameters were considered a good start for the Arena and definitely it can play a significant role as a communication channel for the logistics community.
Looking at the whole period, from February the 4th till April the 30th, we obtain the statistics depicted in the figure below with a total of 13.387 sessions performed by 10,486 users that viewed a total of 29.844 pages, with a page/session ratio is 2,23, an average session duration of 1.50 minutes and a bounce rate of 62,14 %.
It is interesting to note the behaviour of visitors channelled to the Arena through the SocialMedia channels, in orange, and the so-called loyal visitors, in green. Although they represent a small fraction of the total users, they spend more time on the site and visit more pages.
This support the strategy that was adopted to have SM accounts as resonance board for the content published on the Arena.
Associated Partners Group
APG has been a partial failure, although we had interested parties that participated on a voluntary base, overall we lacked the penetration we expected.
On one side we expected the APG member to act as promoters of the Arena, providing contributions and actively participating in the discussion, the other hands APG members were expecting some concrete benefits that were never clearly expressed.
Given the expected and the actual APG activities we can say that the project partially achieved its goals. More particularly, in principle the utilization of APG was to get feedback on the project results and get more insights on real cases with regards how introduced innovations were progressing, the driving factors, the barriers and what the final outcome of this was. This was done through detailed interviews and workshops with various stakeholders, where the consortium obtained deeper understanding of the problems in the real field. In this aspect the project achieved its goal.
However, the project did not manage to reach the targets with regards the participation level both from qualitative and quantitative point of view. More particularly the APG members were less than planned. Also the utilization of the LogisticsArena by APG members did not prove to be the main driver for knowledge exchange and best practices although the project supported it and strongly believes of its potentiality. We can say that it takes more time and more effort towards convincing organizations to participate in such initiatives.
As a conclusion we can say that although the small progress done with regards the APG involvement, the content presented in LOGINN major outcomes remains valid, having the feedback and agreement of a representation of all stakeholders. Both the LogisticsArena and the existing APG members could be used from other projects as continuation in order to progressively achieve high levels of Logistics stakeholders and a living community of knowledge sharing thus resulting in more successful and close to the market innovations.
Innovation Scoreboard
The innovation scoreboard delivered by the LOGINN project is a tool that can be used as a monitoring system for actions fostering innovation in logistics. It provides support for logistics companies to measure the degree of innovation within their company and within different innovation phases.
With the LOGINN Innovation Scoreboard, we aimed at offering a simple tool for which the companies can get an indication of the degree of innovation within their company and also be able to trace changes, i.e. after having inserted specific actions and monitoring their progress in the uptake of innovation.
In order to develop the tool, it was necessary to identify a common framework that could be used. Among the several available, we decided to use the Innovation Union Scoreboard (Innovation Union scoreboard 2014). The rationale behind this choice was that this scoreboard is regularly updated for all EU member states and also for different branches. Therefore, basing the LOGINN Innovation Scoreboard on similar KPIs, will allow users to assess and compare their results and innovativeness and also to draw benefits of finding out how better benchmarked sectors deals with innovation. LOGINN innovation scoreboard measures 20 different KPIs from the three dimensions. In our first prototype, they were considered all equally relevant, but the test results showed that this was not inline with the perception of the users, and that for different innovations and at different innovation stages, the weight of each KPIs might vary. Thus, in the final version, we introduced the possibility to weight the relevance. Although the tool has not been long enough in operation, the received feedback has been positive. Up to now we have had 423 downloads.
Innovation Action Plan
Scope of the Innovation Action Plan is to suggest a set of different specific to be undertaken to overcome the identified barriers and to strengthen the drivers. As stated previously, LOGINN has identified several barriers related to the uptake of the innovation. The action plan starts with these barriers, and has come up with suggestions how different actions can be implemented based on short, medium and long-term effect.
These actions are divided in the following classes:
Future Research Directions – gives an overview of where research and development is needed both on EU and national level as well as more what companies can do internally with their limited resources
Policy proposal-These suggest both action for what a company can do as well as from governmental level.
Proposed Financial Mechanisms. Proposes different funding schemes, tax reduction, Public procurement etc.. crowd sourcing (how to get private capital) in those cases that is need
Regulatory Measures proposal comprises actions that are related to standardisation, legislation and industrial agreements action. At the company level it is more related to quality management, which can be carried out within the company.
Innovation management
These actions are developed mostly for company purpose. They give guidelines on how companies could prepare the system to be more innovation friendly and how to include the employers and customer where appropriate. It also comprises actions that the state and EU can implement in order to push innovation from their research projects in a better way. This is often related to the marketing and advertisement, but also to single information access etc.
For each of these proposals, we have developed main recommendation and implementation guidelines.
In a second step, the action plan takes the 4 main proposals and the instruments to be used for implementing and apply that on the identified barriers. Thus for each of the barriers we have developed specific actions that can be inserted both at the company as well as on governmental level.
Furthermore, the impact of the applications of the actions needs to be measureable. Thus, in order to be monitor the impact, the companies can connect the actions they select with the KPIs defined in the scoreboard.
The action plan in it new version provides guidelines for how companies can foster innovation and also educate their workforce to be open to innovation. Secondly, it provides guidelines for quality ensuring and also for knowledge capturing. From a societal point of view, the action plan has analysed the current instruments that are already offered and how these can be applied for each of the different barriers.
ollaboration with ALICE
LOGINN as a project was requested to establish a good cooperation with the ALICE technology platform. The technology platform had its origin in the WINN project. Even since negotiation phase for both projects there was a clear wish to have a close cooperation since the two projects cover different aspects of the technology and business model development in logistics. In order to foster an active and concrete cooperation, LOGINN offered to set-up a personalised section of the Arena to host the discussion on ALICE’s objectives, initiatives and findings. An ad-hoc digital forum was developed but, after the initial communication, it has never been used.
It is obvious that this had the potential to turn out as a win—win situation. LOGINN would have been able to reach a broader audience for the SM studies, while ALICE (or WINN for that matter) could have gained additional visibility via SM Channels. These are now the exact shortcomings in both projects! The findings of LOGINN could only be validated in the ECITL with a small community, while at the same time ALICE until now has no real implementation and representation in the SM space.
Moreover, initially LOGINN was officially invited to take part in ALICE, in fact one or more persons for each of the ALICE working groups were appointed to represent LOGINN as a project, they have been actively participating in the different workshops and events that have been organised by ALICE (e.g. Paris , Hamburg, Bruxelles, Schiphol).
Such workshops and events did cover many interesting topics related to the objectives of LOGINN and the participants from LOGINN brought the results to be further discussed within LOGINN consortium.
However, the feeling is that the contribution of LOGINN as a project was not reflected.
Although the workshops and events were very well planned and prepared, quite often the open discussions never took place as if the statements and conclusions were decided a-priori and that the role of participants was just to approve them, without being given the real opportunity to bring own knowledge and own opinions to the table. E.g. the discussion on the “Common Framework for Logistics”, promoted and develop by several partners of various logistics projects, was never taken up. Although it is obvious that such a framework could, in a short time frame, support the integration of various island solutions in order to come up with end-to-end holistic logistics solutions for the customer, combining commercial services and solutions from services suppliers all over Europe, thus be the first step to pave the way to the implementation of the Physical Internet.
This was frustrating as ALICE is given an important role in shaping the future of the logistics industry and since many of the LOGINN partners are very competent in that respect.
In any case, the results from the ALICE workshops and events have served as starting point for many good discussions in LOGINN and the overall feeling is that the LOGINN results have improved thanks to the cooperation with ALICE.
Events
The consortium members worked hard to maximise the impact through the participation to numerous events where the project objectives and outcomes have been promoted and the use of the LogisticsArena as major collaboration channel has been encouraged.
Classical Dissemination activities were carried out through the participation to numerous events and conferences where LOGINN was present with dedicated booth and /or with poster or paper presentations.
Where possible Open sessions and workshops have been organised in order to foster an open discussion among stakeholders with the major objective to present the results derived by the project and have them validated by the participants.
List of Websites:
www.loginn-project.eu
www.logisticsArena.eu
margherita.forcolin@cetim.org