The proposed project aims to establish the rail
system as a backbone within the increasingly volatile environment of the Physical
Internet (PI). By early anticipation of uncertainties (order quantities,
follow-up transports, waiting times etc.) the wagon transforms to a flexible,
modular and profitable core element of the fully integrated and dynamic
transport system. To ensure high capability to service increasingly spontaneous
transport orders (“sharing platform” etc.) and smaller batches (“industry 4.0”
etc.), lead times have to be minimized and modularization of transports has to
be promoted. Thus, the objective is to continuously and proactively adjust
capacities and distribute resources through an extensive data usage
(“intelligent wagons”, horizontal/vertical cooperation, “intelligent traffic
systems”) and a (semi-)automatic processing of these data. In this way, an
economic added value for additional shippers (smaller batches with increasing
urgency) can be generated and thus, a modal shift from road to rail will be
obtained.