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Digitization of freight transport chains

In the spring of 2017, a new project started, which was coordinated by CLOSER with Lund University of Technology as technical project manager. The project was called Digitization of Freight Transport Chains and aimed to improve the efficiency of freight transport by digitizing the transport chains to increase transparency and thus enable the buyer to see how the goods were transported. This in turn gave the buyer the opportunity to choose the item that was transported in the most sustainable way. The project was funded with the support of Vinnova, and was run within the framework of the government assignment “Digitization of Swedish industry”.

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Digitization, and the transparency it enabled, are key to sustainable transport. When transport buyers and consumers understand how a product has been produced and transported, their choices can influence to the achievement of sustainable, efficient and traffic-safe transport arrangements. Transparency enabled industry-leading players to show buyers that they are actively working to use the most efficient modes of transport, environmentally friendly vehicles and sustainable social conditions for the people working in the distribution.

The problems in the transport industry are several and the "black holes of the transport", i.e., buyers do not see how a commodity has been transported, leading to inefficient, environmentally and socially unsustainable transport.

The project resulted in an actual service being deployed with the help of project partners Bring SCM, Unifaun and IBM, and which is planned to be the launching point for a new wave of digitalisation in the Swedish, and in the long term, European, transport industry.

Initially, three main work packages were run in parallel:

  • Integration Analysis
  • Identity Management
  • Certification Services

Finally, the various components of the work packages are woven together and demonstrated. The demonstrator was tested in Bring's production environment and displayed in a miniature model where a sample company is coupled to test inserts of respective components, to enable live testing of the system.

Project members:
Bring SCM, Unifaun, CybercomIBM, BTF, NaturskyddsföreningenLunds Tekniska Högskola & CLOSER.

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