Periodic Reporting for period 3 - NEXTRUST (Building sustainable logistics through trusted collaborative networks across the entire supply chain)
Berichtszeitraum: 2018-05-01 bis 2018-10-31
The challenge is to find the right business models for a number of separate activities that when brought together can foster synergies. This can be done by horizontal collaboration between retail, distribution, logistics, traffic management, vehicles and their users whilst exploiting synergies from the vertical integration down-stream to the customer in a more intelligent chain.
NexTrust wants to increase efficiency and sustainability in logistics by developing interconnected trusted collaborative networks along the entire supply chain. These trusted networks, built horizontally and vertically, will fully integrate shippers, LSPs and intermodal operators as equal partners and overcome current obstacles in supply chain collaboration. To reach a high level of sustainability, we will not only bundle freight volumes, but shift them off the road to intermodal rail and waterway, with an expected reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50%. Within a consortium of 31 partners, NexTrust will build these trusted networks ideally bottom up, with like-minded partners, adding multiple layers of transport flows that have been de-coupled and then re-connected more effectively along the supply chain.
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.
NexTrust is now on the “tipping edge” of the first breakthrough of horizontal and vertical collaboration in the European logistics and is about to add an innovative business model to the management of the supply chain. NexTrust has done very good progress in setting up pilot cases and could already go beyond its originally foreseen plan. Some of the pilot cases are already in operation and achieved promising first results. In the next coming months the pilot cases will be validated. The first learnings and once confirmed, the results, will be published on the NexTrust website and then disseminated to the European logistics arena.
The methodologies for calculating the Green House Gas emissions savings are being further developed and the discussions on the sharing of any benefits are progressing well. The latter is not an easy topic but collaboration is about sharing both risks and benefits. As part of the NexTrust project an innovative “trustee business model” has been introduced which will play a crucial role in facilitating supply chain collaboration. It is the first time in the supply chain that such a concept has been implemented on large scale. It is significant that horizontal and vertical collaboration aspects together are addressed properly to significantly change the way the supply chain can be managed today and in the future.