Big data helps to optimise planning
The German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt offers pioneering projects for sustainable logistics in the fight against the traffic chaos. It presents them at the International trade fair for logistics and mobility "transport logistic China" in Shanghai from June 14 - 16, 2016.
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Report INVEST in discussion with Professor Dr. Dirk Sackmann, holder of the logistics professorship at Merseburg University of Applied Sciences and, since 2015, speaker at the KAT Competence Network for Applied and Transfer-Orientated Research into Pathfinder and Logistics Visions.
Prof. Sackmann, in the regional research database https://forschung-sachsen-anhalt.de, your name is under a project called Pathfinder. What is behind this?
We have addressed a problem that is of significant importance today. Namely: How can I carry out transportation while considering all available modes of transportation? We are talking about multimodal and intermodal transport chains. We understand these to mean transport chains with varying modes of transportation. For example, goods transported by lorry and then transhipped by train or possibly by ship. The starting point is asking how I get from one source within the logistics network to my destination.
However, our tool is also suitable for optimising transport networks with regard to environmental impact. This takes place by considering external costs in our tool. Any mode of transportation - be it rail, water, road or air - has an effect on the environment. However, in most tools and in practice, these influences are not yet portrayed. We calculate how the use of a mode of transportation affects the environment.
So you weigh up all aspects of the mode of transportation against each other?
Exactly. Of course, people always speak of the carbon footprint these days. But transport via road has other effects. For instance, the fragmentation of areas by motorways. This is a so-called external effect and something of this kind is not yet considered sufficiently in transport planning. In our tool, we have taken account for external effects as a result of external costs and can therefore measure which transport, via which route, influences the environment and what external costs its use creates.
Can you give an idea of which mode of transportation is the most favourable?
With regards to external costs, we have a ranking. Transport by lorry causes higher external costs than by rail and ultimately than waterway traffic.
But the modules are re-compiled as new each time, if necessary.
Exactly. It can be quite reasonable to suggest that in the local area, transport by lorry with lower volumes and a lower distance would be sensible. This is then consolidated, when modern logistics are developed, by transporting larger amounts and travelling longer distances by rail or ship in the so-called main runs.
How does the introduction of logistics work in Industry 4.0? How do SME could get in touch with that topic? What are the future trends in transport logistics? Learn more about that and follow the link to the full article: http://lsaurl.de/mYfP
Frauke Flenker-Manthey
Press Officer
Investment and Marketing Corporation Saxony-Anhalt
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Investment and Marketing Corporation Saxony-Anhalt (IMG)
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