Freight technology sector

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The freight technology sector (English Freight Technology , shortened to FreightTech ) refers to software companies and technologies that support the areas of supply chain management and freight transport . In the five years following 2014, investment in freight technology companies increased from $ 118 million to $ 3 billion per year.

Complete change in traditional logistics and supply chain management by the freight technology sector

The shipping and logistics industry has long been viewed as conservative and incapable of change, partly due to complex business relationships in the global shipping and transport networks, difficult documentation and customs requirements, a lack of transparency among those involved, and difficulties in adapting quickly to sudden economic changes.

The latest developments in freight technology are intended to modernize and simplify freight transport. According to a report by the United States Department of Transportation , intelligent freight technologies offer multiple benefits for shipping and logistics. This includes increased operational flexibility and efficiency due to better planning and adherence to deadlines, optimized use of personnel and equipment, reduction of unproductive waiting times, shorter processing times and greater confidence on the part of the freight forwarders.

Transactional programming interfaces (API) and distributed ledger technology are increasingly finding their way into the shipping and logistics industry in order to reduce the extensive administrative effort, to monitor the condition and location of the transported freight and goods and to forward this information to those involved, and to increase transparency to increase the entire supply chain .

Truck freight

The first steps towards digitization in the trucking industry were online freight exchanges such as Teleroute and TIMOCOM . Greater efficiency in the freight forwarding industry will be achieved through intelligent freight technologies such as automated interfaces that can help truck drivers and regulators reduce stops at weighing stations and lost time at border crossings . This leads to better adherence to deadlines, reduces the administrative effort and increases fuel efficiency by minimizing downtimes. Mobile tracking programs can also reduce cargo theft and loss by tracking the events that geofencing the doors of the cargo hold and alerting the authorities. The increasing automation in the offering and booking of truck load traffic and the increased automation in the timely coordination of trucks with the corresponding loads also serve to maximize efficiency for freight forwarders and consumers.

Due to the relatively short life cycles for commercial vehicles of three to four years, the introduction of new interfaces and freight technologies in the freight forwarding industry has progressed faster than in other sectors. Compared to other forms of transport such as the air and rail transport are lagging driverless technologies but for road transport afterwards, as the road environments are significantly more complex than the separated areas for rail and air transport.

Air freight

Freight technology in air freight operations is already of central importance in cold chain management for sensitive goods such as agricultural products , vaccines and medicines . Monitoring in the form of data loggers can record the temperature, brightness and humidity of the cargo space as well as the geographical coordinates of the location in order to determine whether the goods have been improperly cooled, incorrectly handled or tampered with. It is estimated that shipping companies lose billions of dollars in revenue annually due to dispute settlement for delivery delays and lost and damaged goods.

The world's first blockchain- based system to streamline calculation, billing and account reconciliation in the air freight segment was announced at the 2019 IATA World Cargo Symposium.

Rail freight

The Freight Technology Group, which is responsible for identifying relevant technologies for the UK freight sector , identified three key technical innovations in rail freight. These are Timetable Advisory Systems , which enable train drivers to follow the current train route using the timetables via software on tablets , cooperative decision-making systems for freight traffic that provide data on the arrival of freight services in real time , and mobile applications that lead to a significant reduction contribute to the amount of data that is manually forwarded to the relevant parties and authorities by capturing and transmitting the data directly.

However, advances in rail freight have been slower than in other sectors due to the decades-long life cycles of locomotives and wagons and the lack of power supply in freight wagons . After a commuter train accident in 2008, the US Congress ordered the North American route network to be modernized with automatic safety controls at a cost of US $ 10 billion, thereby laying the foundation for autonomous trains in the United States. In 2019, the mining group Rio Tinto put the world's first autonomous heavy-duty freight trains on the rails in Western Australia to transport ore from the mines to the ports .

Ocean freight

The increasing number of so-called Smart Ports (intelligent ports) around the globe offers carriers , ports and forwarding partners such as truck forwarders greater capacities and efficiency. A reduction in labor and machine costs can be observed in the ports, which can be attributed to the improvements in automated and semi-automated cranes , which reduce the need for handling vehicles.

In 2018, the shipping company Maersk entered into a partnership with IBM and developed TradeLens, a computer platform for the distribution and rationalization of shipping data among shipping partners , companies and various authorities . In 2019, the platform covered almost half of the world's freight container deliveries .

Intermodal freight

Freight that is shipped using multiple modes of transport is called intermodal freight. Freight technology plays a key role in intermodal freight transportation by streamlining communication, documentation and dispute resolution between the various actors during the freight transition. Freight technology offers a way to increase transparency between actors at every stage of the supply chain . Smart contracts can, for example, use data recorded by data loggers, such as temperature data on cold chain deliveries, to dissolve or contest a contract depending on whether the agreed shipping regulations have been complied with.

See also

Established areas in the FreightTech sector

Growth areas in the FreightTech sector

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b FreightTech investment surges in 2019. April 16, 2019, accessed January 6, 2020 (American English).
  2. ↑ Freight Tech VC on Track to Top 2018's Record $ 3.6 billion. April 29, 2019, accessed January 6, 2020 (American English).
  3. ↑ MercerCapital: The Rise of FreightTech. In: MercerCapital.com. Retrieved October 1, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c Maersk, IBM say 94 organizations have joined blockchain trade platform . In: Reuters . August 9, 2018 ( reuters.com [accessed January 6, 2020]).
  5. ^ A b White Paper - The New Economics of Freight Brokerage. August 20, 2019, accessed January 6, 2020 (American English).
  6. ↑ a b c d Modernizing the Shipping Industry. In: Stanford eCorner. Retrieved January 6, 2020 (American English).
  7. ↑ a b c d e Ron Miller: IBM-Maersk blockchain shipping consortium expands to include other major shipping companies. In: TechCrunch.com. TechCrunch, May 28, 2019, accessed December 10, 2019 .
  8. ↑ The hidden opportunity in container shipping | McKinsey. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  9. ↑ a b c d e The Freight Technology Story - III. Intelligent Freight Technology Benefits - FHWA Freight Management and Operations. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  10. ^ Anthony Charland: What Is an API and How Do They Streamline Freight and Logistics? Retrieved January 6, 2020 (American English).
  11. ↑ a b c d Blockchain in Logistics. In: Logstics.dhl. DHL Customer Solutions & Innovation, accessed October 1, 2019 .
  12. ↑ a b c IoT Powered by Blockchain: How Blockchain technologies facilitate the application of digital twins in IoT. In: deloitte.com. May 2018, accessed October 1, 2019 .
  13. ↑ a b c Resolving the Blockchain Paradox in Transportation and Logistics. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Sara Castellanos: FedEx CIO Looks to Industry Collaboration to Scale Blockchain. Retrieved January 6, 2020 (American English).
  15. ↑ a b Uber is trying to disrupt the road-freight business, Uber is trying to disrupt the road-freight business . In: The Economist . ISSN  0013-0613 ( economist.com [accessed January 6, 2020]).
  16. ^ Digital platforms in freight transportation. October 8, 2017, accessed January 6, 2020 .
  17. ^ Jan Claudio Munoz: Freight Exchanges, Digital Freight Forwarders, Forwarding SaaS. May 21, 2019, accessed January 6, 2020 .
  18. ↑ a b To Get Smart, Ports Go Digital. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  19. ^ Felipe Capella: Technology and the Future of Freight Brokerage. In: Freight Revolution. Freightwaves, accessed September 29, 2019 .
  20. ↑ a b c Oliver Wyman: Disruption: The Future Of Rail Freight. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  21. ↑ a b Daniela Paddeu, Thomas Calvert, Ben Clark, Graham Parkhurst: New Technology and Automation in Freight Transport and Handling Systems. In: www.gov.uk. Government Office for Science, February 2019, accessed October 16, 2019 .
  22. ↑ Glenn Baxter, Kyriakos Kourousis: Temperature Controlled Aircraft Unit Load Devices: The Technological Response to Growing Global Air Cargo Cool Chain Requirements . In: Journal of Technology Management & Innovation . tape 10 , no. 1 , April 22, 2015, ISSN  0718-2724 , p. 157–172 , doi : 10.4067 / S0718-27242015000100012 ( jotmi.org [accessed January 6, 2020]).
  23. ↑ a b CCN and Microsoft launch air cargo blockchain first. In: Air Cargo News. March 15, 2019, accessed January 6, 2020 .
  24. ↑ a b Blockchain in air cargo: Digital disruption in the supply chain. In: ibm.com. IBM Corporation, 2018, accessed September 29, 2019 .
  25. ↑ James Muir: IATA WCS 2019: Blockchain comes to air cargo billing. In: AIR CARGO WEEK. March 13, 2019, accessed January 6, 2020 (UK English).
  26. ↑ a b Rail Freight Strategy. In: www.gov.uk. Department for Transport, September 2016, accessed October 16, 2019 .
  27. ↑ Connected freight trains are better freight trains. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  28. ↑ Autonomous Trains Are Ready to Roll, but May Face Challenges Gaining Acceptance. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  29. ^ Rise of the machines: Rio Tinto breaks new ground with AutoHaul. In: International Railway Journal. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  30. ^ Costas Paris: Big Ocean Cargo Carriers Join Blockchain Initiative. Retrieved January 6, 2020 (American English).
  31. ↑ IBM Contributor: IBM Tech Trends To Watch In 2020… And Beyond. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  32. ^ A b c Jean-Paul Rodrigue: Efficiency and Sustainability in Multimodal Supply Chains. In: www.itf-oecd.org. International Transport Forum, OECD Publishing, 2018, accessed on October 11, 2019 .