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).
