ABSTRACT. Physical internet is inevitable. If we want to meet the objective of the Paris agreement with an investment intensity that is still affordable we need PI. PI can drive efficient utilization of current transport assets and infrastructure up ahead on investing in new one and this could actually reduce the investment needed by a staggering factor of 6. However, there are different ways to get there. Some are more desirable than others and it is never too early to act and shape the future that we prefer.

BIOGRAPHY. Sergio Barbarino is an R&D Research Fellow at the Procter & Gamble Brussels Innovation Center where he leads the P&G C+D (open innovation) team. Sergio is also the Chairperson of ALICE, the EU Innovation Platform for Logistic aimed at realizing the Physical Internet. Born in Naples, Italy, Sergio has a master degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Napoli Federico II and an MBA from the Solvay Business School in Brussels. Sergio has created in 2007 the first group of Supply Chain & Logistic R&D within Procter & Gamble, called Supply Network Innovation Center, of which he was the Scientific coordinator for 10 years. He has been leading the logistic chapter in the informal Industrial Advisory Board of the European Green Car Initiative and EIRAC, the Intermodal Advisory Council, now folded into ALICE (see above) of which Sergio is today the Chairman and for which he has been leading the Collaboration and Coordination Workgroup since the inception. Sergio has been the scientific leader of 2 EU FP7 projects: the C03 consortium aiming at increasing shipper collaboration on Logistics in Europe and Modulushca, aimed at the development of new shareable and reusable logistic standard modules for the last mile delivery. In the Chemical Engineering Domain, Sergio has represented P&G in the Large Collaborative projects Impulse and F3 on innovative micro processing leading some of the best demonstrators. Sergio has developed the manufacturing Processes of many well-known P&G Brands (e.g. Mr. Clean, Viakal,) and has been the chief designer for P&G of Innovative Liquid Manufacturing systems for developing markets. He is also responsible for several P&G Academic Partnerships and has been Visiting professor - among others - at the Ecole des Mines de Paris, the City University of London, Laval University Quebec, Solvay Brussels School, ZLC Zaragoza. Sergio is a rower and has been Social Director at the Royal Sport Nautique de Bruxelles in 2011-2015. Sergio has also a long history of LBGT rights activism: he has been a founding member of DIGAYPROJECT in Rome in 2000, of the BBA in Belgium in 2003 and the GABLE Group at Procter & Gamble in Brussels in 2014. Last but not least, Sergio is a certified Sommelier and is co-owner of the www.onlygreatwines.com company that imports many small producers wines in Belgium and runs the lovely Winehouse Osteria (www.wine-house.be) in the center of Brussels. P&G serves consumers around the world with one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Always®, Ambi Pur®, Ariel®, Bounty®, Charmin®, Crest®, Dawn®, Downy®, Fairy®, Febreze®, Gain®, Gillette®, Head & Shoulders®, Lenor®, Olay®, Oral-B®, Pampers®, Pantene®, SK-II®, Tide®, Vicks®, and Whisper®. The P&G community includes operations in approximately 70 countries worldwide. Please visit http://www.pg.com for the latest news and information about P&G and its brands.

ABSTRACT. Funded on physical, digital and operational interconnectivity the Physical Internet (PI) has been introduced to achieve an open, global and interconnected logistics network. Next to standardized interfaces and protocols, the encapsulation of goods in smart and modular containers is one of the key pillars to realize the PI and to enable an order-of-magnitude improvement in the efficiency and sustainability of logistics systems. The presentation will focus on the possibilities arising from the use of PI containers and possible obstacles towards their implementation.

ABSTRACT. Smart returnable assets such as pallets, used in end-to-end supply chains will gather valuable information (location, temperature, shocks, weight) about the products transported which will provide insights about the quality and origin of these products. Furthermore, this data will be valuable in overall demand planning of these assets, which will result in less assets used and overall less transportation and diversion of products.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this session is to introduce the concept of the physical internet and to illustrate its main characteristics for newcomers to the field. The first part will introduce the motivation for a new logistic organization, its positioning compared to other approaches, its ambitions and the first results obtained. Modular containerization, addressing, routing but also business models will be introduced. The second part will underline the concept with more concrete examples and a storyline explaining the practical application of physical internet from the perspective of a shipper. The last part of the session will be devoted to discussion and answers to questions.
 
BIOGRAPHIES. Eric Ballot is professor at MINES ParisTech - PSL and director of the Scientific Management Lab and one of the founder of the Physical Internet concept. His research focus is to strongly improve supply chain efficiency and sustainability with optimization, simulation and game theory.  He serves in several scientific commitee and boards at french and international levels.
 
Andreas is responsible for strategic initiates and European cooperation at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics in Dortmund. His focus is on innovative ICT solutions for logistics and manufacturing, like Internet of Things, machine learning and autonomous systems. He has a background in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and is vice-chair for innovative ICT systems in ALICE, the European Technology Platform on Logistics.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this research is to develop the best combinations for routes between suppliers and retailers throughout PI hubs by consideration of both economic and environmental aspects. This study is part of French research project named Open Network. In order to create an overall synergy between shippers, retailers, and logistic operators, several Collaborative Routing Centers (CRC) were located in France. CRCs aim to consolidate lots and deliver them in a full truck load to the retailers. This research optimizes the existing network by the allocation of routes between the origins and the destinations in order to determine direct transportation or consolidation process in the hub(s), also taking into account CO2 emissions. A bi-objective optimization model is developed to solve the problem and prepare its implementation. Using a combination of heuristics and exact methods, the model is solved using real input data and then different sensitivity analysis are performed to reach impact of the critical parameters on final solution.

ABSTRACT. The paper aims to present the learnings of a research project in Upper Austria. Since the beginning of 2016 the ATROPINE (Fast Track to the Physical Internet) partners join forces to establish a Physical Internet (PI) test region. The key contributions of this paper are to identify and demonstrate the challenges on the way towards PI and to provide and share experiences of a multi-disciplinary and cross-industry approach.

ABSTRACT. With the introduction of the Physical Internet (PI) a paradigm-breaking field is enabled encompassing the hyperconnectivity and interoperability of smart logistics networks, transportation systems, manufacturing systems and supply chains. During the last years the PI-concept is getting more and more popular but is still mostly restricted to research, which means industry has only minor knowledge of PI at this moment. This is also true for Hungarian companies. Therefore, the main aim of this research is to estimate the abilities and opportunities of Hungarian companies related to the introduction of a future PI network. Starting point of the analysis is the Hub structure. Synonymous to nodes in the Digital Internet, future PI Hubs represent the transition points of a future PI network which serve as meeting, transfer and storing points within the PI activities. As the tasks of the Hubs are usually logistic tasks, a possible solution to build Hubs for the PI network is the using of existing Logistic Centres and a network concept based on regional segmentation (see Figure 1 in the attached document). In a next step this regional segmentation will be used to develop a future PI-scenario investigating a Hungarian-Austrian transport case. Based on this scenario, possible opportunities and advantages/disadvantages for Hungarian companies can be derived. In order to enable seamless open asset sharing and flow consolidation on a massive scale the PI will transform the way physical objects are moved, deployed, realized, supplied, designed and used all around the world. To fulfil those high requirements, PI Hubs need special, advanced machines and handling processes. Therefore, the paper will furthermore investigate and evaluate technical solutions and capacities existing in Logistic Centres based on two different surveys. The paper will be concluded with an outlook on future research towards the realisation of PI Hubs and network concepts for Logistic Centres.

ABSTRACT. Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) can shorten routes and improve delivery times by obviating traffic saturation in cities. In turn, this will help to reduce congestion and the emission of pollutants into the atmosphere.

Additionally, it could be beneficial to many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as it would allow them to finally use e-commerce without facing issues such as losing control of the distribution of their products. In this article, we put forward a model to analyse the impact of a hypothetical scenario in which a business in the Cadiz area cooperates in the implementation of common standards that enable the incorporation of a PI system.

The model is described using the ODD standard (general design information) which is commonly used for model description in fields such as ecology, sociology and economics. We have adopted this approach when developing a simulator that allows us to design a network of flight paths in the improvement of last mile deliveries.

We discuss several important issues such as gathering of initial information, factors to be included multi-agent models, and how authorities can be convinced to change to legislation to allow drones to fly over urban centres.

ABSTRACT. Aviation as we experience it today is mainly the sum of legacy (our past decisions), regulations and technology. Changing regulations and being aware of the role of legacy will be a bigger driver for short term innovation in air cargo transport than a focus on technology.

BIOGRAPHY. Geert Boosten is professor Aviation Management at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. He has 30 years’ experience in airport business, amongst others as Director Corporate Strategy Schiphol Airport. His research unit focusses on applied research on airport capacity optimization.

ABSTRACT. Autonomous cars, trucks, drones and ships have successfully been deployed in various controlled environments and become an enabling technology in smart logistics systems. In recent years, a new mode of transportation has emerged where these autonomous systems cooperate to transport goods across different terrains, waterways and airspace efficiently. Some examples are platooning of autonomous trucks, collaboration of drone and autonomous truck for goods delivery and cooperative drones to deliver a wide variety of goods. We review the evolution of this technology and provide some preliminary thoughts about deployability.

BIOGRAPHY. Bayu Jayawardhana (IEEE Senior Member) received the M.Eng. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Imperial College London, U.K., in 2006. Currently, he is a full professor of mechatronics and control of nonlinear systems in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Groningen, Netherlands. He is a subject editor of International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, an associate editor of European Journal of Control, an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, a member of the Conference Editorial Board of IEEE Control Systems Society, vice-chair of the IFAC TC on Nonlinear Control and chair of the IEEE CSS TC on Systems Biology.

ABSTRACT. Some of the challenges related to the operation of autonomous cargo ships are similar to those for cars or aircraft, but there are many additional challenges. These challenges have a large impact on the business potential of autonomous cargo ships of various types and sizes. In this contribution the specific challenges of autonomous shipping are discussed, followed by assessment of the probability that various segments of the shipping industry will start operating autonomous ships in the near to medium term future.

BIOGRAPHY. Robert Hekkenberg is Associate Professor of Ship Design at Delft university of Technology. Over the last three years he has been actively involved in the development and execution of national and international research projects on autonomous and unmanned shipping.

ABSTRACT. The Hyperloop is a safe, fast, and sustainable transportation system that rivals the speed of aviation, while at the same time decimates its energy use. With the unique ability to provide high-speed direct connections between any number of nodes on a corridor, without hampering the throughput of the network, hyperloop promotes and strengthens seamless transport chains for passenger and freight.

BIOGRAPHY. Stefan Marges is Program Manager for the Hyperloop Implementation Program, with the goal of creating a collaborative Hyperloop ecosystem in which government, industry, universities and research organisations work towards a shared Hyperloop vision.

ABSTRACT. Automation in transport– a key enable for physical internet systems – is progressing quickly. Whereas all the hype is currently with automated vehicle technology, the ultimate success of these innovations lies beyond purely vehicle technology-related aspects. This contribution looks at self-organizing (logistics) systems to coordinate and organize fleets and platoons of automated vehicles.

BIOGRAPHY. Hans is senior scientist at the Dutch research institute TNO, where he is responsible for projects and research on automated and self-organizing logistics. Hans has been working on sustainable and urban logistics over the past decade, and presented as well as published the results of many projects at conferences and journals.

ABSTRACT. Serious gaming is an effective tool in logistics innovation. Games can simplify processes by condensing and presenting complex information. Serious gaming and gamification seduce participants into desirable behaviour and create situational awareness for other roles in the supply chain. Gaming is implemented in business environments and education for knowledge transfer as well as behavioural change in logistics operations and collaboration.

ABSTRACT. Solve it! – Experience self-organizing logistics (SOL) - Meike Hopman
Explore potential advantages and disadvantages of a more central versus a more decentral (SOL) organization structure. The board game Solve it! demonstrates the impact of choices by creating, evaluating and comparing two different organization structures. As a player you translate your findings to your current logistics practice to become aware of future developments regarding self-organizing logistics, and the potential impact of these on your own organization. What could you do now to be prepared for the logistics of the future?

Freight transportation game - Eric Ballot, Mariam Lafkihi
The game is an experimental platform that aims to find the optimal allocation of resources that minimize the overall cost of the transport market by taking into account the interest of each actors. The game is played during several rounds. In a given round, new requests are generated randomly with their information by the game organizer, who create an auction pool of all requests and communicate them to the players (carriers). According to their private information (initial position, residual capacity, cost function, expected margins etc.), players analyze new requests and propose prices on bundles that interest them. Their decisions need to be made on which request bundles to bid for at which price to maximize the profits. Players will submit their proposed prices to the organizer via a web interface and a winner determination model will take place to make the decision in a way to minimize the global market cost.

Mastershipper - Jorrit Harmsen
Make a success of multimodal and synchromodal transport by better understanding the wishes and requirements of the shipper. In the process of synchromodal transport, the shipper is a crucial link: as clients they are the main decision makers and set the boundary conditions for transport. In the serious game MasterShipper you will play as a logistics manager for a shipper and gain insight in the advantages of synchromodal transport. The game has been developed as a follow-up of the successful SynchroMania.

ABSTRACT. Many elements of the Physical Internet are already developing today. Automation, digitization and flexible planning are part of today’s business, but only the first steps have been taken. Implementation of the Physical Internet in full scale will change the looks, position and operation of seaports. In this presentation the Port of Rotterdam will give an overview of what changes are expected and how a port can work with these changes to stay efficient and competitive.

BIOGRAPHY. Michiel Nijdam is Corporate Strategist at the Port of Rotterdam. He is adviser to the board of directors on corporate strategy, economics and logistics. Until 2014 he was director and researcher at the Erasmus University Rotterdam institute for Port and Transport Economics. He is experienced in the maritime, port and transport industry as a project manager for economic evaluation, strategic planning and policy development. In 2010 Michiel earned a PhD degree with a thesis on leader firms and innovation in the port and maritime industry.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, the Maritime & Ports community started a consortium known as the Post Call Optimisation Task Force (PCOTF). The PCOTF set itself an ambitious agenda to develop global standardised ways of working based on existing open global standards where feasible, enabling many advantages in safety, efficiency, reduction in environmental impact, etc. This presentation will run through the various initiatives that are running across Europe and the world mostly from a quite practical perspective and place them into a strategic context. In doing so it will become clear that the Maritime & Ports community has in effect adopted several starting points from the Physical Internet for the further improvement of M&P operations and their seamless integration with end-to-end Supply Chain operations such as pre- and post-carriage within the Hinterland area. It will also become clear that these developments in Maritime & Ports offer massive opportunities to move towards the Hyperconnected Supply Networks that are at the core of the Physical Internet vision and that will deliver the step-change in effectiveness and efficiency in Transport & Logistics that the T&L industry needs to meet the world’s demands over the coming decades.

ABSTRACT. The Port of Rotterdam is an important hub in international maritime supply chains. Efficient functioning of the port requires accurate planning of the processes, thus reducing waiting times and costs for all parties. Therefore, predictions should be incorporated in the planning of all logistic processes. In particular, uncertainty information is fundamental to estimate the reliability of predictions and to adjust the planning. In this research we combine the domain knowledge about logistics with data driven approaches to obtain an uncertainty aware Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) prediction for incoming vessels by using deep learning. Our proposed network provides better ETA predictions than the estimations currently in use, and provides an uncertainty estimation on the prediction. Our experiments show that the uncertainty cannot be reduced by adding more training data of the same type as the one available. Finally, our experiments show the importance of domain knowledge combined with data-driven techniques, to understand the behavior of the network; the lowest uncertainty is anyway obtained by combining all available parameters.

ABSTRACT. Today, we are in the so-called fourth wave of technological revolution: known as Industry 4.0 or Smart Industry. In this wave, sensors, machines, workplaces and IT systems will be connected along the value chain. This will make it possible to gather and analyze (big) data across machines, enabling faster, more flexible, and more efficient processes to produce with higher-quality at reduced costs. This in turn will increase productivity, shift economics, foster growth, and modify the profile of the workforce—ultimately changing the competitiveness of companies and regions. The Physical Internet has outlined a way to enable faster, more flexible and more efficient logistics, thus optimizing value chains. However can you look at them separately or is the 4.0 wave building the momentum and will it embrace the Physical Internet principles to enable Smart Logistics?

BIOGRAPHY. Fred Verstraaten joined Vanderlande in 2011 as member of the R&D Management Team with a focus on the parcel market automated solutions. Since 1 May 2014 he became responsible for Technology Management across all of our market segments. Fred has over 25 years of experience in Software and R&D projects and program management. As Technology Manager Fred is responsible for building visions, ecosystems and delivering MVPs (minimal viable products) on strategic technology themes such as Mobile Robotics, Data Science/Iot, Machine Learning, Energy/Battery and Human Xperience. Fred’s goal is to investigate and advance new technologies in logistics and automated solutions in response to the challenges of an exponential increasingly dynamic world. Vanderlande R&D plays a major role in the continuous improvement of new and highly innovative technologies across all of our market segments.

ABSTRACT. As a thought leader in the logistics industry, DHL structurally invests in trend research and solution development. DHL’s innovation strategy focusses on culture and capabilities, technology exploitation and business exploration. DHL is working on a wide scope of technologies. For warehousing solutions we are focusing on technologies to improve efficiencies. Most disruptive to the traditional supply chain are next-generation robotics , autonomous vehicles, IoT / sensors, Augmented Reality and drones. Important supporting technologies are artificial intelligence, blockchain and big data analytics. Speaker will give an overview of current pilots and deployments within DHL Benelux, ranging from follow me pick carts to vision picking. Challenges and limitations will be discussed.

BIOGRAPHY. Tjalling (50) is an experienced supply chain professional and holds a Master in Mechanical Engineering and a Master in Logistic Control Systems. He started his career as manufacturing engineer for Oce, designing and implementing printer assembly lines. After 4 years Tjalling switched to logistics, starting at Intexo (taken over by MSAS, Exel, and finally DHL) as Engineering Manager to lead a team of engineers responsible for warehouse and postponement / production processes for the customer HP in Amersfoort. He took on general management responsibilities as BU Manager and later Managing Director for this site. After 8 years he switched to business development within Exel/DHL at European level, focusing on product development of technical services. For 4 years, he worked for Gazelle as supply chain manager and later program manager to improve the service levels of this bicycle company from 55% to 75%. Back at DHL Tjalling picked up various operational excellence roles and is now for 1,5 years responsible for Innovation in the Benelux. Within this role he oversees and drives the innovation efforts to introduce new technologies within the DHL supply chain warehouses.

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BIOGRAPHY. Debjit Roy is a faculty member in the Production and Quantitative Methods Area since March, 2012. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering (with a major in Decision Sciences/Operations Research and a minor in Computer Science) and an M.S. in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, besides an M.Sc. (Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He also holds an Associate Professor position at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, where he is associated with the SmartPort and Material Handling Forum initiative, and teaches Master's level courses. His research focuses on estimating the performance of Logistical and Service Systems such as Container Terminals, Automated Distribution Centres, Vehicle Rental, and Restaurant Systems using stochastic models and optimisation. He has received several research awards including the IIE Transactions Best Conference Paper Award in Facility Logistics (2011) and honourable mention designation in the IIE Transactions Best Applications Paper Award Competition (2016). In 2018, he received the outstanding researcher award from IIMA. He has published in several leading INFORMS and OM/OR journals such as Transportation Science, Journal of Operations Management, EJOR, IIE Transactions, and Interfaces. He has co-authored the first book on Trucking Business Management published by McGraw Hill Education in 2016.