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Project

Self-service In Logistics

Self-service in Logistics

Receiving people and goods is a largely manual and time-consuming process for companies. With the project Self-service in logistics VIL aims to automate this process in order to make it run more efficiently. A streamlined process from A to Z is the key to success in logistics. Receiving goods and people at companies often leads to delays, errors due to miscommunication, damage, accidents,… and it ultimately results in a significant increase in costs. In addition, reception areas are often not adapted to the COVID-19 social distancing rules.

Goal

In this project VIL will map the entire process of reception (access control, follow-up, yard management,…) at the participating companies. The goal of the project is to convert the manual aspect to a semi or fully automatic process. The introduction of self-service in logistics will lead to safer and more efficient yard management. The focus of this project is on the technological side, and not the process side of the reception of people and goods.

Specific activities

- Market analysis of existing and new technologies for receiving visitors, subcontractors, dock management and 24/7 parcel deliveries.

- Developing a tool to calculate the advantages and feasibility of the existing solutions and cases.

- Determining a number of positive business cases.

- Selecting and working out a Proof of Concept.

Date:1 Feb 2021 →  31 Jan 2023
Keywords:Self-service, Automation, Digitalisation
Disciplines:Transport economics, General and logistic services
Project type:Collaboration project
Results:
VIL carried out a market study into the state-of-the-art technologies that can fully automate the reception of persons, goods and parcels.

Successful business casesand two Proof of Concepts, were developed at both Scania Parts Logistics and UNILIN. The elaboration of the business cases and the Proof of Concepts show that the automation of these manual processes is indeed financially attractive. Even minimal interventions already lead to significant time savings that significantly increase efficiency. With a positive return on investment after just 5.6 months, excuses are no longer accepted.

With this project, the report and the developed ROI tool, VIL provides the tools to make a reflection on the added value of certain forms of automation.