DHL: 3D printing will not become a substitute for mass-production

DHL released its latest DHL Trend Report: ‘3D Printing and the Future of Supply Chains‘. DHL has been testing a variety of both 3D printing hardware and techniques for several years and has identified applications that have potential to redefine manufacturing and supply chain strategies. While the 3D printing market is estimated to grow between …

Urban freight: hub or no hub?

Countless books and articles have been written about urban distribution centers, logistics decoupling points, city hubs and urban consolidation centers. Every self-respecting European city has been the scene of such initiatives – the one more successful than the other, but all highly subsidized in any case. What can we learn from those initiatives? The best …

The future is in precision-guided logistics

More and more companies are offering their customers delivery options. CoolBlue offers “Ordered today, delivered tonight” service, for example. In the construction sector, it’s: “Ordered today, delivered to the site between 7 and 9 tomorrow morning” – unless you’d rather pick up your package at the pick-up point yourself tonight. Agreed is agreed. Customers expect precision-guided …

Cleaner city logistics starts with procurement

Local government is one of the largest employers in the Netherlands, with departments and services across hundreds of sites in a municipality. Every day, these sites are supplied with printer paper, catering, maintenance products, cleaning items, paving and much, much more. These sites also produce substantial waste streams on a daily basis. The supply and …

SAILOR EU research project: Smart lAst mILe cOmmeRce

The objective of the EU-funded SAILOR project is to develop real-time solutions to the matching problems of parcel delivery companies and the final customer, shortening routing distance as well as increase first-time deliveries and reverse logistics in the last mile. The final goal of SAILOR is to improve cost efficiency and decrease congestions and pollutions …

Give drivers more freedom to plan

Carriers send their drivers out on the road with a set of strict transport orders. Transport planners specify exactly which route the driver is to take. But is that really so smart? With traffic being so uncertain, who is in the best position to make the best decisions: the planner at his desk or the …