NexTrust carried out during the reporting period of the first 18 months important reasearch activties. Most importantly is the validation of the positive effects of trusted collaborative networks with pilot cases. The supply chain actors need first examples and validated positive results of the innovation of trusted collaborative networks, before applying them to the market. The core of the NexTrust research and innovation activities are the setup of 23 pilot cases in different supply chain scenarios. The objective is to have for each defined scenario, e.g. full-truck-load, avoiding empty backhaul trip (pilot 2.1) one pilot case. In the evaluated project proposal, the NexTrust consortium has foreseen to achieve at least 18 pilot cases to be able to validate the innovation. During the contract negotiations with the INEA, the pilot case leaders committed to a higher target of 23 pilot cases. Now, at the first interim report period (31/10/2016), the pilot case leaders achieved to set up 33 pilot cases within the defined pilot categories. This is already a remarkable achievement, almost doubling the expectations of the presented project at application stage. This positive development, will further improve the opportunity to test the innovation of trusted networks on wider and larger scale and therefore can bring even more learnings to the project consortium.
In the whole process of the 33 pilot cases, the new and innovative “trustee business model” plays an important and crucial role in the management of the supply chain. The key prerequisite of NexTrust is that horizontal and vertical collaboration in the supply chain requires trust in order to become a sustainable practice. Facilitating the process is the “neutral trustee” function, which is absolutely required to guarantee anti-trust compliance with EU law, to ensure that companies’ own legal compliance rules are respected and that confidentiality is in place. This trustee business model makes sure that there is no collaboration in place which restricts competition between two or more independent market operators. In this way, the innovative business model guarantees that for example any price fixing, market sharing or other kinds of anticompetitive behaviour which would impede effective competition is going to happen.
Furthermore, the trustee is responsible to ensure that the collaborative network will be constructed in such a way that a fruitful long term, sustainable relationship between partners can be maintained on a flexible, community basis.
The trustees are coordinating and supporting the entire collaboration life cycle of the potential FTL pilot cases, building the business case outlined herein required to “package” the collaboration in a sustainable way. Some trustees out of the 14 have a dedicated role (e.g. legal, ICT or audit), allowing them to leverage their expertise to bring a clear added value to the management of the trusted collaborative networks. In order to make sure all pilot cases’ progress can be measured and make progress in a structured manner, the tried-and-tested 3-step methodology is used throughout the NexTrust project, with the big building blocks from a project management point of view: identification, preparation and finally operation.
