"Beam me up, Scotty!"

Logistics was not a big challenge for Captain Kirk and his mates during their Star Trek adventures. Captain Kirk’s transporter chief, Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, was capable of beaming people and things toward remote places in near-real-time.mpanies offer each others' products to their European customers with an open book approach.'

True, people sometimes got lost. But generally spoken, Scotty’s machinery did the job perfectly - without any delay, at a cost within budget and without apparent impact on the carbon foot print of space.

Unfortunately, our present technologies are not capable of beaming things. We cannot achieve the service level offered to captain Kirk. Our technologies are less capable.
Nevertheless, our logistics should strive to match Scotty’s service level by making smart use of concepts and technologies. Transport, Storage, Handling, Information & Communication technologies have to be lined up in order to execute logistic processes which aim to be as capable as Scotty’s. In the same way, logistics processes have to be rethought and have to be re-designed whenever technology evolutions offer new opportunities. 

Collaboration in logistics is a huge opportunity. Collaboration means that different parties allow each other to make use of each other’s resources. Resources such as infrastructure, equipment, people and even products.

Collaboration happens for example when two (or more) independent manufacturing companies decide to make use of each others warehouse infrastructure as a base for the European Distribution Centre of their final products. More collaboration occurs when these manufacturers join up their transport planning in order to maximize truck loads towards their European customer base. Extended collaboration happens when such companies offer each others products to their European customers with an open book approach.

A similar example can be found when service organizations such as insurance or banking companies would share warehouses, inventories and transport means for the supply of stationary, collateral and promotional materials to their local offices.

Great opportunities can be realized when health care organizations decide to collaborate and to share warehouses and inventories for their medical supplies.  Collaborative environments undoubtedly lead to important cost savings for all parties involved and may yield new business opportunities. Cost savings are related to reductions in inventories, in warehousing space and in transport capacities. New business opportunities will occur when parties start using each others products and expertise in a collaborative manner. Notwithstanding these opportunities, it is a fact that the number of successful collaboration projects in logistics is small. New projects are scarce. 

The reasons for the gap between theory and practice probably may be quite simple. Collaboration implies that parties decide to share their resources, with full respect for each others autonomy.  Such autonomy can only be warranted if:

1. Parties have a clear understanding of the TO BE processes, service levels, related costs and the sharing mechanisms for cost savings. The TO BE processes will need to ensure that parties will respect each others markets. 

2.  Parties can monitor such processes, costs and service levels in a near real time. Collaborating parties will have to be able intervene in these processes if they wish to.

Undoubtedly evolutions in Information & Communication technologies over the last decade have enabled collaboration in logistics technically (ii).  Logistic Solution Providers are nowadays in a position to implement and to execute collaborative Supply Chain Projects on behalf of several parties whereby these parties are actively involved and participating in the processes.

The problem with (1) is that parties operating in similar markets often are reluctant to share information with each other. Furthermore parties may lack sufficient expertise in order to document TO BE processes in a contractual and objective manner, safeguarding their business goals.

The challenge posed by (1) may be solved when collaborating parties are  able rely on professional and independent “Orchestration Partners”, who have the capabilities and the expertise to shape collaboration projects.  Effectively, new “Orchestration Partners” are today emerging, trying to identify and to implement collaboration projects.  It is their challenge to boost our logistics by enabling collaboration projects.

Collaboration in logistics will allow us to deliver products into places at lower costs, with higher response times and with a smaller carbon foot print. Similar to what Kirk and his mates are doing somewhere up there between the stars….