The initiative, believed to be the first of its kind in the UK, aims to reduce the carbon emissions of delivery trucks that are empty or near-empty while on the road.
The project will leverage emerging technologies including distributed ledger technology (DLT) and the internet of things (IoT) and will involve the development of a shared digital infrastructure that will facilitate intelligent management of vehicle slot filling, routing, and tracking, allowing competing logistics providers to share information about available truck space across their collective fleets safely, without requiring a single party to have full control or visibility of the entire system.
The infrastructure, powered by DLT, aims to increase coordination across the logistics sector while maintaining commercial sensitivity and data security, enabling greater operational efficiency.
The project, which is being is led by Digital Catapult, brings together five digital innovators: Vodafone Digital Asset Broker, Microsoft, Yusen Logistics, Fuuse, and Parity Technologies.
The initiative is part of Digital Catapult's Made Smarter Innovation Digital Supply Chain Hub, which aims to make supply chains more efficient, resilient, and sustainable by developing and promoting the adoption of advanced digital technologies in supply chains across the UK.
Tim Lawrence, Director of the Digital Supply Chain Hub, said: "Manufacturers are facing unprecedented cost and risk pressures across all areas of their businesses, especially in their supply chains from increasing costs of energy, labor, and logistics. There is growing demand from businesses to make supply chains more sustainable, and this logistics project can play a key role in demonstrating the benefits of working together to achieve this."
Leo Pickford, Head Of Business Change at Yusen Logistics, said: "This project allows logistics companies like ours to collaborate and still compete in new and more efficient ways, with new business and governance models allowing logistics companies to work together to mutual advantage, reducing costs while working towards a more sustainable future."
The project will run until September 2024. Digital Catapult has set up an observer gallery to enable organisations to learn more about this project and build on its work. The observer gallery will feature regular showcases of the project's progress, starting this month. Interested parties can register on the Digital Supply Chain Hub site here.
According to Digital Catapult, road freight transportation produced 11.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2020, posing a threat to the UK's progress towards net zero by 2050. The Logistics Living Lab project intends to address the fact that freight accounts for 31% of all CO2 emissions from transport in the UK, which is a significant contributor to climate-related risks like extreme weather and climate change.