Ports have developed over the last decades, in line with the emerging global economy, into global hubs for large scale efficient trade and shipping. Especially in Europe, with busy shipping routes and ports spread all over, many gateway ports are facing the challenge of handling export, import and transhipment containers in an energy and emission efficient way. One of the key business opportunities for the Port of Rotterdam is the growth of conditioned containers. Fresh supply chains require outstanding performances on, for example, food and product quality, logistics indicators, sustainability requirements, energy use, container maintenance and control capacity of reefers, sophisticated terminals and related infrastructure and a willingness among all actors involved to make this to a success. Unfortunately this is not yet the case. Sustainable port development requires a process that is based on insights in the supply chain of conditions goods including energy consumption (hardware and techware), but also a process oriented approach (orgware) dealing with governance and transitions This projects deals with innovative management strategy to overcome barriers and to support public decision makers and private actors to influence complex societal transformation processes towards a certain desirable direction; in this case a vital, efficient and sustainable supply chain based on conditioned transport from international sources and to new markets, with a central role of PoR. We will develop new reefer logistics concepts and focus foremost on the suitability and acceptability of these concepts by all stakeholders, using a socio-technical analysis and transition management approach.

The research aims to support the development of the multimodal transport system in the Netherlands, and by extension, in Europe, into a truly synchromodal transport system, in which infrastructure use, transport services and operations are perfectly aligned with market demand. This requires the integration of data on infrastructure, services and transportation, the development of new synchromodal control mechanisms, and the further analysis of demand characteristics of shippers. This project provides the academic underpinning of the ambition and innovation vision that is formulated for synchromodality in the Topsector Logistics. So far research has mainly addressed horizontal alignment between modes into a coherent network. The main research angle for this project is the vertical alignment, i.e. the shipper/client orientation and the relations with the underlying network management. In addition to the fact that these vertical relations constitute scientifically unexplored territory, we argue that they are of critical importance for the deployment of synchromodal transport services. In short, if service demand is difficult to predict and if capacity availability is uncertain, the synchromodal service market will not function. Academic contributions include (1) improved freight modelling by improving the representation of shippers? supply chain considerations; (2) quantification of the impact of the level of information exchange and collaboration / competition among organizations on synchromodal planning and execution; (3) new real-time decision making approaches and pricing mechanisms for synchromodal solutions; and (4) the development of information concepts that enable ?data synchromodality?.

Synchromodality is the effective, timely and sustainable use of transport modes in a network, under the control of a network orchestrator, in such a way that an integrated transport solution is offered to the customer. Delivering a Synchromodal transport solution demands much more from the various parties in the network than is customary in intermodal transport in terms of education, understanding and cooperation. A synchromodal transport product is therefore difficult to implement as it requests a mind-shift by various parties at the same time. As long as this mind-shift is not properly addressed, the investments that are made in synchromodal transport cannot be developed to full potential. So far, it was difficult to really implement the synchromodal product because operational staff, sales executives and customers need to be convinced of the benefits, and all at the same time. To make implementation easier and more successful it was therefore concluded that a synchromodal game is needed. Using a game, parties involved can experience the effectiveness of synchromodal transport themselves by action learning. The goal of this project is to develop a synchromodal game that includes the hinterland network between Rotterdam, Venlo, Nijmegen and Duisburg, and which is suitable for experiencing synchromodal transport planning by operational staff. When developing the game?s requirements and algorithms, essential knowledge on decision influencing factors for the further development of planning systems will be build, like how to select the most suitable connection and prioritizing transport bookings. Playing the game will help operational staff to develop improved operational procedures. In addition, the use of the game with sales representatives and customers results in a mind-shift that will lead to an increased percentage of a-modal bookings. The project partners will invite their partners and customers outside the consortium to participate in gaming workshops so that knowledge is developed and disseminated at the same time. The game will be evaluated and improved based on criteria like the game?s outreach and its power to convince and improve understanding of Synchromodality. In addition to the development of the game and the gaming workshops, the project will also demonstrate the lessons learned in real-life. Daily operations on the network of the partners will be improved in a Living Lab environment based on the outcomes of gaming. This will give insight in development of new operational procedures and their fit in current way of working and also in an increased number of a-modal bookings from a specific target group. The project is performed in a partnership between ECT, Danser, TCT Venlo, DeCeTe and TNO, starting March 2014 and with a runtime of 1 year.