Collaboration Concepts for
Co-modality, CO3 is a business strategy enabling companies throughout the
supply chain to set up and maintain initiatives to manage and optimise their
logistics and transport operations by increasing load factors, reducing empty
movements and stimulate co-modality, through Horizontal Collaboration between
industry partners, thereby reducing transport externalities such as greenhouse
gas emissions and costs. The CO³ consortium, which is made up of logistics
specialists, manufacturing industry and transport service providers, has been
working on the topic of collaboration and co-modality for two years and already
produced a first draft of a model framework with legal and operational
guidelines for collaborative projects in the supply chain. The 18 partners of
the consortium in seven EU countries will coordinate studies and expert group
exchanges over a period of three years, and build on existing methodologies to
develop European legal and operational frameworks for freight flow bundling,
(WP2) -. We will come up with joint business models for inter- and intra-supply
chain collaboration (WP3) to deliver more efficient transport processes, increase
load factors and the use of co-modal transport. The results of the studies and
expert group exchanges will be applied and validated in the market via case
studies (WP4). The aim is to set up at least four different real-life
applications of collaboration across the supply chain by using road transport,
multimodal transport, regional retail distribution and collaboration for
warehousing activities. We will also promote and facilitate matchmaking and
knowledge-sharing through CO³ conferences and practical workshops to transfer
knowledge and increase the market acceptance of the CO³ results. This will be
done through discussions with a High Level Board of European Industry supply
chain Leaders, (WP5).