Chapter 14: Intelligent Freight Transport Systems: Opportunities and Practice

Information and communication technology (ICT) has provided the means to achieve transparency in logistic networks, both in real time and in advance of logistic operations for achieving a better planning and afterwards as well for analysing the performance of the system. The potentials for logistic control have been enhanced tremendously. In practice, this has resulted in many improvements and some really good success stories can be told. However, the potential for further improvement of logistic efficiency and effectiveness seems to be much larger then what has been achieved up till now. Some of the blocking factors for this further development lay in the way the business world is organized, which for a large part has to do with protecting of vested interests and resistance to change. This chapter tries to capture the state of the art of logistic organization with an emphasis on intelligent freight transport systems (IFTS). First of all, the relevant concepts and definitions related to IFTS will be given. Then the business concepts behind successful applications of ICT in IFTS will be described as well as some enabling and blocking factors that stimulate or hamper successful application of promising innovations. These will be followed by a presentation of some success stories that will illuminate the way ahead.