Information Systems in Transport and Logistics - Term Paper Example

Research paper on Information Systems in Transport and Logistics [School] Number] September 11, Information Systems in Transport and Logistics According to Dima, and Vlăduţescu (2012), the application of information systems in transport and logistics management can be categorized into three broad groups. These include; Those systems applied by those companies involved in organizing transport operations that involve more than one mode of transport or participation of one or more transport companies. This systems maybe referred to as transport chain management systems or supply chain management system in regard to their scope of operations and the functions carried out. For the scope of this research paper, this type of systems will be referred to as transport chain management (TCM) system. Systems applicable to terminal operators i.e. individual transport companies. These individual companies use these type of systems to manage their own resources and alas carry out tasks involving transportation on behalf of their clients. However, these systems are best applicable if the transportation of goods is carried out using a single mode i.e. a single transport vehicle from the origin to destination. Those systems applicable by authorities for the purpose of receiving information about either future or ongoing transport operations. Other systems that fall under this group include those used in managing traffic i.e. provision of information regarding infrastructure capacity as used by service providers involved in logistic. These systems are normally based on local levels i.e. Port Community Systems that are used for communicating purposes between authorities and other stakeholders in the commercial services around the port. Other examples involve those used in the national level for instance the National Single Window (NSW) systems that is applied in mostly for regional level. Example of such a system is Safe Sea. The figure below (Figure 1) shows the illustration of such transport system. For instance from Figure 1, the individual providers of single transport services have developed their own legacy systems used to manage their fleet and also carrying out booking. The following services i.e. terminal, rail and maritime transport services are centrally manages by a composite service offered by an organization. These organizations may include either a logistics integrator or a freight forwarder and they perform this functions with the help of application of a transport chain management (TCM) system. The second rail, terminal discharge port, warehouse or logistics terminal and provision of a truck for transportation are provided by another second company that is also ether using a second transport chain management (TCM) system or a supply chain management (SCM) systems depending on the situation at hand. Lastly, the door-to-door operation of transport, normally between two smaller chains is carried out be a third company also applying its own third transport chain management (TCM) system or a supply chain management (SCM) systems. (Dima, and Vlăduţescu, 2012) For interoperability purposes, there is less need in describing the actual working of transport legacy systems or other individual transport chain management (TCM) systems. The important aspect is how these legacy systems interact with current state of the earth systems. The interaction between such systems is also indicated in Figure 1 in instances of proper guidance. With the emergence of advanced technologies in transport and logistics such as Euridice that are being used in handling self-aware, connect and context-aware cargo, the way these systems operate and communicate may be different but the structure of governance is almost same as legacy systems. (Alsudairi, and Dwivedi, 2010) Figure 1 An example of transport chain management (TCM) system and supply chain management (SCM) system include FREIGHTWISE and Logit D2D, that have been developed by EURIDICE and have capabilities that are most similar. For instance, Logit is based on the Logit D2D prototype is considered more advanced in terms of integration. This Logit 4SEE® has included new features and functionalities in order to enable execution of pilots and also comply with the common network. This is important since both transport chain management (TCM) system and supply chain management (SCM) system requires information that is updated to include the cargo status progress and load unit. This kind of information may be obtained directly during the order processing or may be archived from the systems that are specializing in the visibility of the chain. Examples of these supply chain visibility include Smart_CM and INTEGRITY. (Caramia, and Guerriero, 2009) At different levels of the transport and logistics operations, there exist systems used for reporting to authorities. For instance, on the local level, various systems exist and these are located at points of transhipment. An example of these system include Port Community Systems (PCS). Such systems at these points are applicable mainly for the purpose of receiving any kind of information of the transport vehicles used for transport and the cargo they are carrying. This information is conveyed to the authorities by such systems. This systems are also concerned with adaptation and sending of information to other stakeholders in within and around the transport chain i.e. ports or terminal. This therefore indicate that a large number of authorities require information regarding the movements of both the cargo and fleet. This therefore creates a need for a national window system to monitor such systems and convey corresponding information. However, in some instances, local level system such as Port Community Systems (PCS) may be used to provide such a single window interface. Regional Systems such as SafeSeaNet applicable in European region is used to collect information about all the ship movements in Europe based on the information from the reports at the ports of individual member states.  (Jansen, Swinkels, Teeuwen, Fluiter, and Fleuren 2004) Types/ Modules According to Pons, and Pérez (2000), the types or modules of information systems applied in transports include; 1. Freight management systems According to studies in many countries, there are expectations that the volume of freight going through national highways will double by the year 2020. The movement of freight is very key and important in any geographical region in terms of economic vitality and survival. Most country’s ministries or departments concerned with transport are required to maintain a reliable report regarding the freight transactions within its corridor. Therefore, all these activities can be efficiency and easily be carried out through the application of information technologies in transport. These technologies for instance such as transport chain management (TCM) system or a supply chain management (SCM) systems are concerned with the improvement of motor carrier enforcement and an amble regulatory environment. These information systems involve activities such as safety assurance i.e. Change of safety information and automated inspection, administration i.e. application of permits, electronic registration and fund payments, carrier operation and management of fleet i.e. provision of traveller information and on-board monitoring and finally electronic screening which involve activities such as safety and weigh screening, checking of credentials and clearance at country borders. (Stojanovic, Predic, Antolovic, and Dordevic-Kajan, 2009) 2. Transit Management Systems. Examples of information systems that fall under transit management systems include computer aided dispatching (CAD) systems, Advanced Public Transportation Systems (APTS) and automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems. A combination of these systems allow transit and logistic agencies be able to provide information that is valuable and that can be used for strategies involving operational control hence reducing the number of fleet required to provide a certain service. By this, the transit and logistic agencies can also be able to optimize the fleet resources. Transit management systems have also proved important in terms of transit signal priority by improving the on-time performance of the transport vehicles. This systems also allow vehicles that are behind schedule during transit to reduce delays and time wastage along the transport route. This therefore means that transit management systems enhance reliability of the freight transport hence improving both the efficiency of the transit operation and customer satisfaction hence reduction in costs for the companies providing transit services. It can be concluded that, transit management systems need to have a close collaboration between the local agencies and the transit provider that are operating in a certain route and region. (Taniguchi, and Thompson, 2003) 3. Freeway and arterial management systems The freeway and arterial management systems are normally applied in the management of traffic. They perform this through the use of control signals from traffic signal, ramp meters, closed-circuit television (CCTV), system detectors, bus probes and variable message signs (VMS) so as to ensure improved performance and efficiency of freeway and arterial roadways. The main function and purpose of these systems is to apply the available information in the improvement of the traffic flow, the experience of travelers along these freeway and arterial ways, reduce costs and increase safety. 4. Advanced and adaptive signal control systems Advanced and adaptive signal control systems are applicable in the control and coordination of flow of traffic for transport vehicles in metropolitan areas. They function for a continued adjustment of signal timing parameter based on the recent volumes. These systems consist of a centralized control and coordinated operations of signal across the area of operations. These systems have been found to have a lot of benefits to the control and operation of fleet applicable in transport and logistic operations. The benefits include reduced time wastage during travel time, no or mean more delays, less and minimized stops during transportation and less exhaustion of the operators. However, the success of such systems in transport and logistic operations depends on the how the systems is implemented in its operations. (Ślusarczyk, 2010) Characteristics of information technology systems in transport and logistics According to studies by Ślusarczyk (2010), informations systems applicable in transport and logistics should have the following characteristic; They should be able to scale the system. This means that the information system should comprise of simple devices and the software should be scalable in order to handle any scope of data involved. It should also be able to offer and allow communication and information flow from sensor and trucks and at the same time from its GPS sensors. This therefore means, it should not have a limited scope in terms of information collected. Interactivity. The information transmitted between the transit vehicles and transport and logistics agency need to interactive. This has several advantages since it allows better contact and interaction between the transit vehicle drivers and logistics agency. All these are made possible by transport chain management (TCM) systems. Continuous transmission of information. A superb transport chain management (TCM) system ensures continuous communication between the fleet and the control center to ascertain the progress of the dispatched goods. Statistical scope of data representation. Transport chain management (TCM) system have the ability to export data for other information systems in the enterprise. Therefore, through a statistical way of representation, the data provided can be compared with other parameters hence coming up with informed decisions. Cloud supported. Some transport chain management (TCM) systems have a central server from which all the parties involved in the supply chain can access data at any time over the internet. Therefore, the most important factor during the choosing of a suitable transport chain management (TCM) system is the return on investment. This can be achieved through the achievement of the above character tics for a transport chain management (TCM) system. Roles of these systems 1. Simplification of the end-to-end transport options There is always a need for increased partnership between the actors in the transport and logistic industry. These actors include freight forwards, shippers, terminal operators and transport operators. This is important since it ensures not only effective but also adaptive transport and supply chains. The transport chain in this case refers to all organizations and activities involved in the moving and handling of products and goods from a depot or warehouse to a consumer deport through transport network. Therefore, with the application of transport chain management (TCM) systems in the handling of these goods, the system ensures collaboration in the transport solution, easy coordination of activities and transaction of administrative activities. (Taniguchi, and Thompson, 2003) Therefore, a transport chain management (TCM) system simplifies the planning phases, executes and follows up the transport services occurring between the provider and the clients of such services. The main of a transport chain management (TCM) system is to be able to carry out these functions without any interference of other internal processes and systems within the organization. Therefore, this can be effected by through development of very small set of information packages that are well defined and with the requirements and responsibilities defined. The use of information packages constitutes interactions between the transport network manager, the logistic service clients, logistic service provider and the transport regulator. In this case, the logistic service client is anyone who wants his or her cargo to be transported while the logistic service provider is carried out the task of transporting the cargo, managing and operation of the means of transport. The transport network manager provides information regarding the infrastructure while the regulator ensure all the services are completed in times. (Ślusarczyk, 2010). Therefore, in a nut shell, a transport chain management (TCM) system simplifies the end-to-end transport options by making information regarding the availability of a transport service easily accessible, advising on the best transport for a particular transport including ways of making it easier for other actors in the chain to collaborate with others and supports the collaboration and negotiation among the actors in the chain. It also lowers the entry barriers so as to enable small-sized companies to benefit from these transport chains and enjoy low-costs and software tools that are easy to use. Therefore, an effective transport chain management (TCM) system need to be implemented in a distributed way with respect to information and control and should also be easily be compatible and interoperable with other legacy enterprise resource systems (ERP) from other collaborating actors. From a transport chain management (TCM) perspective, one can view transport chains are virtual enterprises which are defined as an alliance of temporary enterprises that have merged to share skill, resources and competencies in order to respond to the business opportunities at hand whose operation is governed by the information systems. The chain can also be viewed as a community of the internet with adopting of cloud based transport chain management (TCM) systems. Therefore, the actors in the chain join this community by the help of a particular transport chain management (TCM) system such as Logit 4SSETM. Therefore an actor in the chain can join the community by agreeing user agreement and adopting a Transport Service Description (TSD) for his or her network. This ensure that such a community is dynamic and one can join or leave at their own will. Lastly, a transport chain management (TCM) systems can be seen a breeding ground for the supply and transport chain i.e. the actors in the chain constitutes of enterprises that are collaborating with each other through establishment of agreements to cooperate. This however makes the supply chain more complex but it can be seen that from the perspectives discussed above, the use transport chain management (TCM) systems simplifies the end-to-end transport options within the transport chain. (Alsudairi, and Dwivedi, 2010) 2. The connection between proprietary systems is simplified. From the diagram in Figure 2 below, it can be seen that the usage of a transport chain management (TCM) system by each of the actors in the transport chain leads to simplified proprietary systems. Figure 2: Interaction with existing actors and systems This can be achieved through the use of two main approaches. Firstly, will be the application of either commercial or legacy systems to interact with the systems being used by other actors in the transport chain. This applies connector for the transaction of information formats that is used by the proprietary systems with standards that are less generic. Therefore, the application of these of connectors by the proprietary systems, other connector types can be ignored hence a significant huge customer base that each connector is responsible for. These connectors can be implemented and be marketed by a large and lively marker place. This therefore, the only way the large systems suppliers can have a breakthrough in their operations. This therefore allows the actors in the chain to exchange data irregardless of the transport chain management (TCM) system they are using. (Caramia, and Guerriero, 2009) The second approach involve the use of cloud based TCMs i.e. using a single web browser interface to access and interact freely with the information systems being used by other actors in the transport chain. This is important for small business since it enables them communicate with standards within the common framework even if they haven’t integrated large transport chain management (TCM) systems into their operations due to limited financial resources. The example of these web browser interfaces include Logit 4SEE and are provided at very low costs. Therefore from the two approaches, it can be concluded that the use of transport chain management (TCM) systems such as Logit 4SEE ensures that connection among proprietary systems in the chains simplifies. (Taniguchi, and Thompson, 2004) Limitations of such Information systems According to Pons, and Pérez (2000), the application and use of transport chain management (TCM) systems may face limitations due to equipment and technologies used and unavailable resources during their implementation. A complete investigation of usage of such a system in transport and logistic operation has discovered limitations especially data collection, manipulation on the output process. 1. Collection and manipulation of data During the transportation of goods, there are no effects for the incidents in the path calculation. For instance, for the fleet management system, information in regard to incidents and events such as road construction and road blocks are kept separate and are never used in the calculation of the path. This may produce irregular path. Most transport chain management (TCM) systems use a manual way of obtaining information regarding to incidents and other special events. They do not use an incident detection algorithm and any other similar approaches to detect the kind of information. It relies on information collected by other data source hence making it vulnerable. It cannot differentiation among vehicles i.e. most transport chain management (TCM) systems cannot differentiate the different vehicles being used in the transportation and provide output based on the information of the vehicle being used for transportation. Geographical information is inadequate. Some transport chain management (TCM) systems may not have a properly organized geographical coordinate information so as to locate different locations. Mostly, only the direction of the location is properly maintained using GPS. 2. Limitations during output process Limitation to media broadcast information. Some transport chain management (TCM) systems are based on highly available and usable media. This include voice, web and SMS enabled. Therefore a system only limited to these has no WAP service, GPS, VMS or PDA service hence making them vulnerable. Inadequate user interaction. Some systems have limited user interaction in their operations. For instance, in web based interfaces like Logit 4SEE, the user must choose a suitable location from the available names in the dropdown list. This therefore limits user to other locations. It only provides specific node and edge info. Presently available transport chain management (TCM) systems only provide information about limited node an edges which is very insignificant in regard to the area of coverage. The congestion in the system cannot also be controlled. The system also provides only a single output against the request i.e. no alternative path option is provided. Case studies of Companies that have benefited An example of such a company is Trimet which is based in Portland and has significantly benefited from the implementation of a transport chain management (TCM) system. In 1998, the company comprehensively implemented a transport chain management (TCM) systems i.e. both a computer aided dispatching (CAD) system and automatic vehicle location (AVL). In a 10 week long study on the impact of the system to its operations, it was found that an on-time performance had increased by 9.4% and a 3.1% increase in run-time performance. There was also a 5% headway between its trucks and also an 18% in the average coefficient variation. Therefore with the improvement in both run-time and on-time performances, the transport and logistics agency was able to reduce the operating cost through eliminating of these runs and adding value elsewhere within the system to ensure improved customer service. Therefore, the improvement of the run times due to the adoption of a transport chain management (TCM) system enabled the company to provide the same level high and quality service to its customer hence engaging efficiency. (Jansen, Swinkels, Teeuwen, Fluiter, and Fleuren, 2004) The integration of transport chain management (TCM) Information Systems can be advantageous to many companies in many ways i.e. it can lead to a reduction in costs incurred during transactions through elimination of steps within the transport chain that are unnecessary. This can be effected an enhanced customer service that leads to effective coordination between the vendors, manufactures and customers hence an improved market share that is characterized of better customer service and lower costs. Therefore, a successful transport chain management (TCM) Information Systems ensures bottom-line benefits. For instance, supply chain leader companies like IBM, Xerox, Procter & Gamble, Nabisco, Becton-Dickinson and Chrysler have fully integrated transport chain management (TCM) Information Systems in their operations and this has had many positive effects in their operations in terms of lower costs and improved customer service. (Dima, and Vlăduţescu, 2012) Optiroc Limited is another case study where Transport Chain Management (TCM) Information Systems have successfully integrates with the company reaping massive benefits. For instance, the systems adopted by Optiroc integrates an e-business solution with their logistics partner. This solution provides real-time information regarding order transacted between the two partners. For instance, whenever a customer’s order is entered into Optiroc’s Transport Chain Management (TCM) Information Systems, it is automatically reflected at the logistics partner’s planning system. Also, one the logistics partner completes the processing of the order and updates information in their system, it is automatically visible in Optiroc’s ERP system. The vehicles used to supply the products are also equipped with mobile terminals hence providing real time update on the delivery progress of the order. This therefore ensures the company maintains a competitive advantage in the market. (Stojanovic, Predic, Antolovic, and Dordevic-Kajan, 2009) Works Cited Alsudairi, Mohamed, and Yogesh K. Dwivedi. "A multi-disciplinary profile of IS/IT outsourcing research." Journal of Enterprise Information Management 4.1 (2010): Print. Caramia, M., and F. Guerriero. "A heuristic approach to long-haul freight transportation with multiple objective functions." Omega-international Journal of Management Science37.3 (2009): 600-614. Print. Dima, Man I., and S. Vlăduţescu. The Companys Logistic Activity in the Conditions of Current Globalisation. INTECH Open Access Publisher, 2012. Print. Jansen, Benjamin, Pieter C. Swinkels, Geert J. Teeuwen, Babette V. Fluiter, and Hein A. Fleuren. "Operational planning of a large-scale multi-modal transportation system. “European Journal of Operational Research 156.1 (2004): 41-53. Print. Pons, Joana M., and Maurici R. Pérez. "Geographic Information Systems and Intelligent Transport Systems: Technologies used to form new communication networks." International Journal of Education and Research 54.8 (2000): 122-141. Print. Stojanovic, D., B. Predic, I. Antolovic, and S. Dordevic-Kajan. "Web information system for transport telematics and fleet management." Eight Computational-Communicative Operations of Building Information 64.1 (2009): 99-123. Print. Taniguchi, Eiichi, and Russell G. Thompson. Logistics Systems for Sustainable Cities: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on City Logistics (Madeira, Portugal, 25-27 June, 2003). Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2004. Print. Ślusarczyk, B. "Transport Importance in Global Trade." Advanced Logistic Systems, Theory and Practice 4 (2010): 45-96. Print. Read More