The use of modern logistics solutions will allow companies to achieve savings and reduce the negative impact of road transport on the environment. Research results indicate savings in transport costs (approx. 20 percent), kilometers traveled (almost 30 percent), as well as a reduction in the number of individual shipments by 37 percent.
Transport, logistics, and ICT play a fundamental role for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Management in SMEs in the European Union faces many difficulties; companies have limited access to international transport solutions due to:
- low frequency of shipments, too many vehicles not fully loaded participating in the transport process, and low utilization of intermodal transport,
- low level of ICT equipment limiting access to the logistics market.
The Institute for Transport and Logistics in Bologna, together with seven partners from Central Europe, initiated the introduction of a European network equipped with ICT tools in order to rationalize selected transport processes and logistics activities of manufacturing companies. The KASSETTS project began in October 2008 and is funded by the European Commission.
The goal of the KASSETTS project is to solve the mentioned problems by creating a network of logistics coordinators using ICT tools. Each coordinator connects logistics departments among SMEs: they collect transport orders from companies daily, aggregate them, and optimize them in regional and European supply chains, in cooperation with other coordinators, based on destination/quality/shipping time, and pass these orders to selected logistics operators (road and intermodal transport). The coordinator is not a new 3PL or 4PL logistics operator, but is an integral part of the logistics department in a manufacturing company.
The project is based on an international partnership of public institutions from Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. KASSETTS is based on the development of SMEs and international trade relations. Future expectations also concern the possibility of influencing regional policy, aiming to optimize transport and logistics activities, SME competitiveness, and environmental protection.
The results of the project are published on the website http://www.kassetts.eu