Smart freight to enhance efficient and sustainable distribution

Paper in proceeding, 2008

Information systems are mostly based on a centralized concept creating situations in the supply chain associated with a number of vertical transactions to the central information system. A major problem is linking the product information to complex supply chain activities. A solution for improving the management of items is to decentralize the information of individual products and access the relevant information directly from a carry-on information tag based on identification technologies (e.g. RFID). Distributing data needed along the goods flow in a supply chain, opens up for local decision making. In the decentralized system each system interaction point is attached to logic needed in order to handle the goods at that point. In order to make this scenario possible the goods must operate in communication with other intelligent parts and intelligent infrastructure. The goods also need to be able to interact with the appropriate resources performing value adding. In order to perform such decisions all relevant transactional intelligence needs to be brought down all the way to the execution level. In this project we identify, outline and create solutions that make goods and consignments in a perceived way smart. The technical solutions for connectivity between goods are created from a logistics point of view. In this context smart means an IT and transportation environment where local decision making for supply chains is enabled.