Summary
Transport services represent a major business area within the European economic scenario, employing almost 8 million people and directly affecting final costs of goods and products. Market structure is characterised by a widespread galaxy of SMEs and by few large multi-national groups. SMEs appear to be quite similar one to another, as far as their service offering is concerned, independently of their country of origin. This fact leads to a high degree of competition that is currently almost exclusively biased towards costs rather than overall quality of supplied service, implying a much needed background shift from bureaucracy to customer satisfaction.
Customers appear to be demanding for more added value from their transport service providers, asking for increasingly sophisticated partnership within their production pipelines and up to a complete out-sourcing of own logistics.
Currently, most transport activities are carried out on ground, road haulage Bolding by itself a share of about 70% of European transportation market. Large groups can better perform when it comes to handle multimodal transportation, that is the capability of managing the most effective mix of transportation means to serve one’s customers in the best suited and most competitive (in any sense) way. Increasing internationalisation of business, elimination of barriers and customs within the EC, increasing environmental concerns (truck haulage is the first responsible for air pollution in the EC), sustainable mobility, etc., are influencing SMEs to reconsider their traditional approach to market.
All this given, the capability for SMEs to exploit new business practices that can allow them to adequately adapt to the quickly changing market appears to be fundamental if they are to resist and compete on the long run. Structural factors such as organisational infrastructure and financial capability represent the major drawbacks to pursuing a competitive policy versus well-established, multinational Multimodal Transport Operators (MTOs). It is in this context that the idea of a networked enterprise, made-up of tens of SME transport operators, all acting and behaving so to be perceived from the market as one large enterprise, can represent a paradigm shift for thousands of European SMEs, enabling them to act as de facto MTOs within a virtual company. This new business practice can he named Virtual Multimodal Transport Operator (VMTO).
A VMTO might then be thought of as being formed by many — as many as needed — independent companies all adopting, to different extents, a common organisational infrastructure, obeying and complying to a well-defined reference model, presenting comparable cultural background and exploiting common IT potential. In this scenario, IT is seen as the strategic enabler of the change.
The Trans2000 Project proposes two European SMEs that are willing to work-out the VMTO business best practice, approaching the pilot experiment with much determination and commitment. The goal of the Trans2000 pilot is to demonstrate the feasibility of the above proposed VMTO, working to achieve a complete definition of the organisational reference model and advanced IT infrastructure that potential future VMTO members can pragmatically adopt.
The Consortium set-up to achieve pilot’s goal is composed, besides the two user industries (Intertrasport and ITG), by one major consulting firm (KSA) and a much experienced system integrator (TXT), each one contributing with adequate skills and knowledge to the overall project. Intertrasport will act as primary pilot, whilst ITG will participate as co-pilot, thus proving the feasibility of the overall co-operative environment.
Pervasive quality is considered a necessity in the design of the new business practice. Notwithstanding that, BPR is perceived as the most effective methodological framework in which to effectively carry out the proposed changes, allowing for the re-design of a quality aware organisational environment without the limitations current business practices would induce if a somehow smoother approach, such as TQM or continuous improvement, would be chosen.
Major benefits are expected from the VMTO business best practice. Among others, overall diminished overheads, sharpening of the users’ competitive edge, pervasive enhanced practicability of more sophisticated services, widespread saving of consumable resources, such as paper, and wide geographical coverage, both national and international.
The European transport market size and structure ensure wide exploitation of project’s results. Exploitation will be carried out internally to Intertrasport and ITG organisations, to complete and disseminate achieved results. Outside dissemination and exploitation will concern both project specifications and deliverables, some of which can lead to marketable products such as the VMTO Organisational Handbook and the VMTO IT infrastructure. All four partners will disseminate and exploit project results together or independently from one another, according to the case.
The Trans2000 pilot experiment is planned to be completed within a 30 month period and it is partly funded by the Commission of the European Communities under the ESPRIT Programme, Technologies for Business Process Domain.
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© 1997 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
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Tavano, R., Guida, M. (1997). Trans2000. In: Doumeingts, G., Browne, J. (eds) Modelling Techniques for Business Process Re-engineering and Benchmarking. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35067-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35067-7_2
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