The document summarizes how the economic crisis will lead to structural changes in freight transport and logistics, including greater integration with manufacturing, more reverse logistics activities, and increased collaborative logistics. Collaborative logistics, where companies bundle logistics flows, is seen as an important way to reduce costs through more efficient operations. Large companies driving collaborative logistics will require logistics providers to also adopt collaborative models.

1. Development of Freight Transport and Logistics
after the Economic Crisis
The below insight is inspired by the inaugural
i
Structural change
lecture of Prof. Dr. Werner Rothengatter , Only a crisis leads to a change of routines and
laureate of the Belgian Francqui Chair 2009- changing routines means changing structures.
th
2010, on March 15 , 2010, at the University of Structural change in order to accelerate growth
Antwerp. can come from creative destruction/disruption or
can be driven by innovation (incremental or
Summary radical and driven by technology).
The economic crisis and its impact on Analysis of the scenarios for development after
globalization will lead to structural changes the crisis, results in the highest probability for the
affecting logistics: Schumpeter philosophy based scenario. This
- short term impact: less capital scenario can be summarized as “a medium term
employment and higher flexibility structural change without radical innovations”.
- long-term impact: higher quality, more
value add, collaborative logistics. Drivers for long term structural change
in logistics
Impact of the 2008/2009 economic
Current drivers are:
crisis on Transport and Logistics - modularization and dematerialization, i.e.
Collapsing of the globalization bubble, visible less material in products versus more
through the growing imbalance in trade balances technology
since 2000 and driven by the opening of the - globalization, foreign investment and
Chinese market, still has a huge impact on local content
transport and logistics related industries: - consumer demand
- hundreds of orders in shipbuilding Future drivers are:
(vessels, tankers, etc.) have been - increase of continental trade (e.g. Asia)
cancelled during 2009 - lower speed of globalization
- truck manufacturers are still producing on - climate change fight (once this topic will
low capacity, e.g. Daimler currently come down from political level)
produces at 40% of total capacity - increase of local content
- Rail freight dropped considerably (e.g.
Deutsche Bahn freight volumes
decreased with 19% over 2009, with
peaks of 40%
- Truck traffic decreased (e.g. Deutsche
Tollcollect income dropped with 18%
over 2009.
Marc Borremans, Head of Logistics industry,
marc.borremans@finpro.fi

2. Long term structural change of i
Profile of Prof. Dr. Rothengatter:
logistics www.zei.de/download/merni/CVs/Academics/Rothengatter.pd
The long term structural change of logistics will f
ii
consist of: Postponement (also known as 'deferred completion')
involves creating large runs of standardized products and
- further integration of logistics with customizing them for local markets in the downstream supply
manufacturing. chain - minimizing stockholdings and cutting inventory
Pianos are tuned by musicians, copiers obsolescence, while maintaining high levels of flexibility and
programmed by programmers, printers customer service
iii
Finpro’s 2007 study “European Freight Village Network”
locally customized, etc. described the business opportunities for Finnish companies in
What is new is that already today, these construction, material handling and logistics related industries
are examples of activities performed by
DHL in logistics centers. DHL also
started the manufacture of different
finished products in Leipzig (Germany)
by assembling modules and components
arriving at the Leipzig logistics village.
ii
This also offers postponement
advantages
- reverse logistics (remanufacturing,
recycling, etc.)
- collaborative logistics (see below)
Collaborative logistics
Especially collaborative logistics and bundling of
logistics flows is of interest as this is a solution to
meet sustainability, efficiency and effectiveness
and leading to 20% decrease of the total logistics
cost.
Logistics companies are still reluctant to co-
operate. The reason for this being that co-
operation requires sharing practices, often
considered as a basis for competitive advantage.
Because collaborative logistics is driven by large
companies, e.g. VW, Procter&Gamble and others
already started collaborative logistics, logistics
companies will have to follow.
Bundling of logistics requires clustering of
activities. Over the years, the European Freight
iii
Village Network (also known as EDC) as well as
gateways have been established and allow
activity clustering. E.g. Schenker Railport system
in Europe, consisting of junctions allows
bundling, swapping, add value, add production
activities, etc.)
Collaborative logistics can be considered as the
most important change in logistics industry since
4PL. This also offers opportunities for new
service providers, orchestrators of collaborative
logistics.
The LinkedIn group “Supply Chain Horizontal
Collaboration” gives you a community to discuss
this further.
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