People living in favelas are buying their food locally, from small family stores - called by researchers "nano-stores" (Fransoo et al, 2017). Most of the food sold by these nano-stores is prepackaged food, of low nutritional value, and very unhealthy if consumed exclusively.
The Physical Internet aims for a paradigm shift by eliminating the unsustainability issues in today’s supply chain processes. The development of the concept in recent years has shown that the PI is still in its conceptualization phase. In order to increase the attention and adoption of the concept both, in literature and practice, empirical knowledge is needed concerning how and why affected stakeholders will adopt the concept. To address this gap, we gathered qualitative data through a single embedded case study approach. In total, we have integrated 14 stakeholders with verifiable expertise in the PI. The sample consists of logistics and transport service providers, shippers and includes companies selling or working on specific PI-products. Furthermore, we gathered empirical data from research institutes with specific knowledge or projects in the PI. This paper provides insights about the adoption of the PI and in particular about stakeholder intentions, organizational and technological readiness as well as barriers and drivers.
Over the last couple of years, virtualization of telecom networks by separating software from hardware led to new business models. Since the Physical Internet is considered as the logistics equivalent of the Internet, it might be worthwhile to assess developments of the telecom sector and investigate its potential to supply and logistics. Future directions for innovative business models, - roles, and required functionality are explored and discussed. Data sharing is a prerequisite to realize these models with its supporting functionality.
Physical Internet is based on the physical mobility of logistic resources; therefore, we will try to move from an inefficient use of resources to a more efficient use of them. There is and will probably always be a temporal-spatial gap between providers and recipients. The logistics task is to plan and carry out the flow of goods in the supply chain in the most effective manner, which we can achieve by increasing the variables of Social Capital.
Just as the information can be transmitted over the net, through the Internet, we should be able to do the same with the goods that could be sent through a global logistics network. This requires close cooperation of the cooperators (integration of processes, exchange of resources). Through our work we will try to relate the dimensions of Social Capital, the relational, structural and cognitive dimension with the Physical Internet.
We attempte to analyse them from the point of view of Social Capital and analysing how this cooperation is between competitors, as Physical Internet demands to share those logistical networks, so that we would be talking about the External Social Capital (Bringing Capital), focusing on external relations to the enterprise.
As defined in ALICE (European Technology Platform) we will focus on finding the benefits of social capital as a variable that deals with coordination and collaboration between the parties interested in global supply networks.