Creating the Internet of Logistics
all forwarders with all road carriers would
result in 40 billion integrations needed, as
well as another 300 airlines, shipping lines,
all the 150M+ shippers, ground handlers,
terminal operators, customs and customs
agents, consignees and so on. It becomes
quite evident that the peer-to-peer
integration will not work for digitizing the
logistics industry beyond very siloed
application areas. In order to cope with this,
different kinds of supply portals have been
developed, but the increased globalization
and need for agility has limited their
adoption. Some of these have evolved into
large industry hubs covering a specific
location, mode of transport or industry.
IoT
Increased requirements that shippers need
to understand regarding the environment
through which their goods are travelling are
driving the need for instance sensory devices
in order to detect any cargo experiencing
shocks, temperature deviations, theft, or
other issues.
This places new demand for the ability to
roam different logistics networks without
dedicated connectivity and backend
systems. For example, a cold chain container
should be able to not only signal to the
ground handler that an action is needed but
also to alert the owner of the cargo that a
deviation has occurred.
e-Commerce rising
The other area to consider is the "Russian
doll" of tiered connectivity and roaming
inside different connectivity layers (i.e.,
RFID, BLT, WIFI, 5G) and physical layers (i.e.,
boxes, containers, cargo hull) depending on
transport mode and transport service.
New challenges such as e-Commerce are
driving the transformation from largely
comprising enterprises ordering transport
and importing/exporting to individuals being
shippers and consignees.
As a result, the number of importers and
exporters is increasing exponentially,
putting great strain on regulatory processes.
It is therefore needed to enable new services
to execute transports in compliance with
regulations to manage this change in the
industry.
Standardization
Because of the volume of both physical
objects and information, the logistics
industry is supported extensively by systems
with specific purposes and business
configurations that need to be integrated.
Integration between systems, even between
systems running the same software, can be
configured and setup quite differently,
making integration an extensive business
process and data mapping exercise. Figure 3
shows examples of systems involved in
executing logistics.
Customs and postal services have especially
noticed this trend and are struggling to cope
with the increase of parcels and entities that
need to be managed.
- 15 -
March 2020