Peter O’Driscoll, managing director at RingGo, addresses the biggest misconceptions around transport industry technology

Over the past ten years, we’ve seen substantial shifts in the way we travel around towns and cities. Changes have not been limited to what vehicle we prefer to use, they have extended further to the reshaping of transport policy.

While consumers have sought convenience from digital and autonomous technology, the urgency of the climate crisis has ramped up the need for eco-friendly journeys. Both factors have spurred advances in innovation and, even with the destabilising travel standstill over the past year, progress hasn’t slowed. In fact, we’ve seen an acceleration towards more efficient journeys that leverage intuitive and autonomous technologies.

The craters left by lockdowns have been huge, and we’re still studying their impact lines. However, through conversations with councils and businesses, we’ve been able to separate the mobility myths from the reality. With this in mind, we can highlight the lessons learnt about parking, payments and technology to help businesses embrace the change and be ready for the future.

Myth 1: Moving away from fossil fuels is too expensive

When it comes to electric vehicles (EVs), vehicle costs and range anxiety come out on top in consumer concerns with many of us focused on our bank balances in the here and now. But EVs will soon be a necessity, with the UK government pledging a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, so getting on board with the switch will soon become inevitable, rather than optional.

EVs are becoming more accessible, with support coming from the government who has promised to improve smart mobility infrastructure, with a £20m boost to promote electrification and cure range anxiety.

There are now more EV charging sites than petrol stations in the UK. As of April 2022, the total number of locations which have a public charging point installed is 19,707, compared to 8,380 petrol stations. Meaning motorists can travel the distance safely around the UK in electric vehicles feeling assured by the knowledge that they’ll be able to top up their charge with ease.

Myth 2: The traditional commute is dead

Even though remote working put the brakes on travelling for many of us, this is now set to change. If anything, with a sense of cabin fever taking hold, it’s likely we’ll see more cars on the road because of the safety concerns from the pandemic. Two years of hand sanitiser, social distancing and masks have naturally left their mark, with crowded public transport holding little appeal. In fact, to encourage a return to streamlined transport in cars and vehicles, we’re seeing metropolitan areas lead the way for efficient travel.

According to the “Cities of the Future Index” by EasyPark, London is the best city for parking in the UK, scoring top marks (100) for parking innovation, with Manchester (97.2), Edinburgh (97), Sheffield (92.4) and Cambridge (90.1) rounding out the top five. App uptake, smart parking capabilities, mobility attitudes, and government initiatives were all assessed to calculate the progression of parking innovation. In terms of progressing clean transport strategy, London takes top place again (85.2), followed by Edinburgh (80.8) and Sheffield (80.5). The introduction of an open market in parking enables motorists to benefit from a choice of providers in select areas, meaning that travelling from A to B will be that much easier.

The results show that cities are largely geared towards enabling seamless, clean car travel – and that those looking to commute can do so efficiently, while safeguarding their health and safety by avoiding public transport networks. With these results from EasyPark in mind, we’re likely to see a rise in car clubs and ridesharing as the preferred way to commute. Inevitably, this will lead to more traffic on roads, and technology will need to step in to help manage the new commute and management of fleets.

Myth 3: Green transformation is a pipe dream

For those more cost-conscious, it can feel like eco-friendly progress is a hefty expense we could do without. But it doesn’t always have to be, and in the long-term we’re seeing technology make green transformation incrementally easier and more accessible.

Making greener choices can be as simple as making a journey from one point to another that bit quicker. By avoiding congestion, traffic or circuitous routes, motorists can make a dent in their carbon footprint, all through tapping a few apps in the palm of their hands. With cars now becoming more and more like ‘smartphones on wheels’, we can enjoy vehicles automatically taking care of mapping journeys, locating parking spaces and payment legwork. With more convenience through digital services, making greener choices is becoming far more common, and ultimately restoring our return to local high streets and retail centres.

Outside of parking, open data networks will provide customers with useful information about a range of services designed to build convenience into their journeys, including EV chargers; accessibility for those with a disability; and air quality information, just to name but a few. This will meet driver expectations and result in a positive shift in public attitudes towards parking.

Looking ahead

The temptation after the disruption of the past two years might be to stand still. But with pressures setting the pace for change, across legislative, cultural and environmental areas, the advantage is with motorists who see past the mobility myths and embrace the opportunities available in the current day.

By leveraging intuitive digital solutions to improve mobility, motorists can generate lasting eco-friendly changes while making their travel more efficient. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we can’t see sweeping change happen with a snap of our fingers, but advancements in technology and shifts in public attitudes, alongside the push from government legislation to go green, will help spur on positive trends in transport.

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The post Busting the mobility myths of the transport industry appeared first on Information Age.

The transport and logistics sector was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with much of the world going into lockdown in order to help combat the virus. However, AI and automation technologies have been disrupting the transport and logistics space over the past two years, allowing the sector to innovate and aiding the recovery process. Post-pandemic, this trend looks set to continue bolstering operations.

Philip Ashton, founder and CEO of 7bridges, said: “AI solutions in transport and logistics (T&L) have been part of this growth, and will be essential for meeting consumers’ increasingly high expectations.

“Whether businesses are T&L providers themselves, or companies dependent on efficient supply chains for smooth operations – like retailers – embracing AI innovation is vital to be competitive.”

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According to McKinsey, logistics companies could generate between $1.3 trillion and $2 trillion per year for the next 20 years by adopting AI. This article will delve into the many use cases that AI and automation has within the transport and logistics sector at present and going forward.

Cognitive Machine Reading

One kind of AI implementation that has been leveraged within the sector is a way to efficiently read masses of various data types, known as Cognitive Machine Reading.

Asheesh Mehra, co-founder of Antworks, explained: “The COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to a period of difficulty and uncertainty within the logistics and transport industry. Travel and operational restrictions caused up to 75% of companies to experience significant disruptions to their supply chain operations. However, for those companies that have taken action to digitalise, automation has played a critical role in supporting and maintaining business as usual for processes such as logistics planning and customer billing.

“Cognitive Machine Reading (CMR)-based automation tools are reducing the arduous and time-consuming manual tasks traditionally associated with logistics planning. CMR does this by analysing, extracting and processing both structured and unstructured data formats, to quickly generate highly accurate reports for forecasting and follow-through operations.

“CMR is also transforming how companies process their billing mechanisms, another activity that is typically manually intensive. An example is a global transport and logistics company that managed to increase the accuracy of their billing procedures by up to 80% through CMR automation and reduced processing times by 63%.”

AIoT

A second kind of technology that has been disrupting the transport and logistics sector combines AI with the Internet of Things (IoT).

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“The fast inroads made by emerging and new technologies have left transport and logistics companies with a lot of catching up to do,” said Anshuman Singh, managing partner at Mindtree. “In 2019, we saw an increase in an infusion of IoT into existing scenarios – with most of the challenges around adding IoT/sensor capabilities and enabling intelligence on the edge being resolved under AIoT.

“While the original purpose behind enabling these capabilities may have been to do with early prediction of faults or optimising usage patterns for efficiency, the large volume of data now available from these devices/sensors has opened up new avenues of exploration and optimisation.”

Singh went on to explain that progression occurred in the following three stages:

1. Enabling core capabilities on the edge – these included basic sensor development, integration with available devices.
2. Collecting the data generated from these sensors and storing them in a structured form on a central data store or data lake – typically on the cloud.
3. Realising the synergy between AI/ML and IoT and combining them together into AIoT.

“Focus in this area has also been evolving along with the core technology itself – shifting towards applications of AIoT – away from initial device capabilities/integration,” Singh added.

“While IoT provided access to a large base of information, AI has enabled the creation of intelligent and energy efficient freight systems, enabling us to excel in energy sustainability, while in pursuit of our goal for greater supply chain orchestration.”

AI in aviation

Bhanu Choudhrie, founder and executive director at C&C Alpha Group, explained how AI has, and can continue to assist operations within aviation, an industry that was particularly impacted by the pandemic due to demand plummeting.

“AI technologies have already been widely adopted across the air transport industry,” said Choudhrie. “From facial recognition at airport passport security to baggage check-in and remote aircraft monitoring, for years these innovations have been streamlining processes, both for operators and customers. However, AI has a much greater potential beyond these current applications.

“AI can play a pivotal role in revolutionising the aviation industry and Alpha Aviation Group is already working closely with both regulators and airlines to develop its potential in supporting the efficiency of air transport and future pilot pools.

“AI and machine learning algorithms excel at recognising patterns and are extremely efficient at collating data from the process of training cadets. As most flight simulators are already equipped with sensors that generate considerable amounts of data, this resource can now be used to assess pilot competency from the onset of training.

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“Powerful AI and machine learning systems can analyse hundreds of flight parameters and sort through thousands of hours of simulator data to produce findings that a human coach wouldn’t have been able to determine. For example, AI programmes can evaluate a pilot’s ability as they execute key manoeuvres and create a comprehensive assessment of a cadet’s strengths and weaknesses based on real-time data.”

The value of AI in aviation was also demonstrated by the UK Government’s approval of a project worth £3 million, known as Project Bluebird, to implement live trials of the first ever AI system for airspace control. Having lifted off in August 2021, this is being undertaken in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute and the National Air Traffic Services (NATS).

Supply chain management

A major aspect of transport and logistics operations is managing supply chains, and John Malpass, former retail consultancy practice lead EMEA at Teradata, provided insight into how this area can benefit from AI.

“AI presents one of the biggest and most promising technological advancement opportunities facing the logistics and transport industry, not just in terms of robotics to replace manual tasks, but in the way we think about and manage the entire supply chain,” said Malpass.

“Using AI to simply improve existing processes will, however, limit the potential value it can deliver. The technology really proves its worth when we use it to transform ways of working and business processes.

“Operating at the epicenter of this transformative change with AI is data. Integrating disparate data from the end to end supply chain and orchestrating it through automated analytics capabilities will enable new insights based approaches to optimise and operate the supply chain. Approaches which will allow users to think holistically about how the supply chain is managed in ways they have never been able to before.

“Using the combination of integrated data and predictive real-time automation, users can renovate and rethink outdated, manually intensive business processes. If implemented correctly, artificial intelligence will introduce new game changing capabilities which will drive a whole new way of working across the logistics and transport sectors delivering transformational and lasting change.”

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Monitoring weather conditions

Lastly, AI is capable of monitoring weather conditions in order to help find ways round coinciding problems, according to Peter Van Merode, vice-president, 3PL industry strategy at Blue Yonder.

He explained: “AI can play a key role in identifying potential transport and logistics disruptions, using information such as weather and expiration date of products in combination with machine learning (ML) to minimise problems, or avoid them altogether.

“For example, if AI spots that rough seas might potentially lead to a port being closed, ML can then be used to help retailers navigate the problem by advising another route to take. This is crucial as a delay to a boatful of vegetables arriving could lead to them having a shorter shelf life, or even perishing before they reach the store.

“Avoiding these kinds of logistical problems helps with efficiency while also dramatically cutting waste, ultimately helping retailers to increase profits.”

The post Use cases for AI and automation in transport and logistics appeared first on Information Age.

To unlock better public transport, and reinvigorate falling passenger numbers, we need to rethink data management, according to Chris Chinnapan, sector director for transport at mpro5

When we think of public transport a few years ago, before the pandemic and terms like ‘the new normal’, we probably think of a slightly messy, slightly crowded, and potentially stressful experience. Whether that’s sitting opposite a half-eaten sandwich or rushing to find the secretive, hidden platform 1 in Leeds Station, there are many reasons to find the transport systems of ‘yesterday’ a less than ideal experience.

Public transport today has some different characteristics. Firstly, passenger numbers are down: according to government statistics, passenger kilometres by rail declined in 2020 by 80% compared to 2019 – and other forms of transport show similar stories. Secondly, we now have different expectations when using public transport – as clean means safe, and tidy means sanitised in the minds of travellers. As you may expect, both of these issues are down to the pandemic.

To unlock a better mode of transport for tomorrow, and to fix the issues associated with the past and the present, we must embrace multimodal transport – and the key to this is good data management. If operators shared data freely, and it was managed effectively by good software, public transport could be transformed into a hassle-free, real-time system of interconnected parts.

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Navigating multiple modes of transport

Public transport, particularly outside of major cities, can be a stressful and confusing experience – and it simply shouldn’t be. An issue can ruin the whole journey, and waste the money spent on each leg of it. Journeys with multiple modes of transport, all with different operators, ticket requirements and timetables, can be difficult for even the most patient and street-smart among us.

This is clearly bad for passengers, and it is even bad for those running these systems – as every lost customer is lost revenue, particularly when passengers are looking for every excuse not to sit in a carriage crowded with strangers.

A single, unified, interconnected network

The solution lies in changing the very idea we have of public transport. Instead of inefficient and disjointed services by multiple operations, we need a single, unified, and interconnected system – where trains, buses, trams, and even ride-sharing services work together to get anyone from A to B effortlessly.

This is multimodal transport – and it will allow people to plan everything in one app, see all potential routes and timings in real-time, and use any of them without having to buy separate tickets.

A clear added benefit for operators, alongside the surge in ticket revenue of course, is that they can reduce services where needed and focus on the busiest areas and times. Real-time data, and correct data management, will allow operators to focus efforts on the stations, routes, areas and times they are needed.

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Unlocking the data that fuels multimodal transport

Multimodal transport has, at its core, the concerns of the passenger in mind. However, for this to work, we need to rethink how we harvest, store, and manage data – as it needs to be shared freely between operators.

Of course, IoT will be vital – but we know that, and it is used extensively already, for example London Underground is already using digital twins. As with all data collection, and IoT is just an effective way of harvesting massive amounts of data in real-time, it is useless without execution. You can have all the data in the world, but if you can’t access it and create working solutions from it, then you may as well have no data at all.

IoT will continue being adopted, and rightfully so, but the true vision of tomorrow relies on how we use data. We must end silos, where each mode or operator hoards and guards what it has learnt. Also, while we are on the topic, we will need to do away with physical logbooks and the confusing collections of various digital tools that don’t interact or integrate with one another.

We need a single source: one central hub, updated and accessible 24/7, with data from every mode and operator flowing freely in and out to be used to make everyone’s lives easier.

So, how do we get there?

Data can be collected by employees, and sensors on all vehicles, processes, and platforms through the use of an app. This will build a holistic view throughout organisations – from punctuality, to rush hour passenger densities and ticket sales, to maintenance and cleaning.

In turn, this provides real-time data to be harvested, patterns to be spotted, and current and future operations to react accordingly – for both passengers and of course industrial and delivery vehicle fleets.

Ultimately, data is the core of providing not only an improved passenger experience, but also making seamless, multimodal transport a reality.

The post Efficient, multimodal transport requires a data management revolution appeared first on Information Age.

Ryan Oakes, Accenture Public Service global managing director, and Mark Lyons, managing director for Accenture Public Service in Europe, discuss the need to rebuild public infrastructure with digital capabilities

In many countries around the world, one doesn’t have to go far to find creaking bridges, crumbling roads, and jammed rail networks. It’s an unmistakable fact that much public infrastructure is simply worn out and in urgent need of a refresh.

Thankfully, these needs are drawing considerable attention from government leaders. Accenture recently polled public infrastructure leaders in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and found 80% were expecting spending increases to address this specific issue. Big funding initiatives, such as the landmark $1 trillion infrastructure bill in the US, the UK’s £22 billion infrastructure bank and Australia’s $110 billion infrastructure pipeline fund suggest that their expectations are warranted.

The COVID-19 pandemic has catalysed much of this focus on infrastructure. In the wake of the crisis, many national economic initiatives are focused on recovery and infrastructure builds are seen as an important part of delivering growth and new prosperity. Government leaders are facing a rare opportunity to reimagine infrastructure projects so that they are more attuned to community and economic needs and opportunities, citizen-friendly and sustainable in the long term.

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The role of digital transformation

The increased use of technology and data are key to infrastructure plans. “Building back better” will involve digital capabilities to help drive better services and new efficiencies. Yet, 67% of the infrastructure leaders we polled admitted they haven’t deployed any new technologies over the past three years. To put it bluntly, you cannot build smart future-proof infrastructure using outdated tools.

A platform approach

Along with infrastructure needs, new opportunities presented by digital capabilities can elevate project support and processes and bolster efficiency and accountability. Agencies often have numerous projects underway at any given time and should be looking to track and manage aspects such as timelines and costs from a single platform.

From a compliance perspective, the platform approach also makes sense. With a one-stop-shop for project data, project assessment and reporting can become both more transparent and more accurate. What’s more, real-time data could be used to identify and predict maintenance needs, resulting in more efficient, faster and successful projects.

Unfortunately, research suggests most infrastructure agencies are not far along in rethinking the role of data and digital tools. For instance, 30% of the public infrastructure leaders we spoke to say they have deployed machine learning for project prioritisation, selection, and planning. Just 19%, meanwhile, are using it for cyber security, particularly worrisome given growing transnational abilities to attack infrastructure systems.

Agencies should be starting to reimagine infrastructure by considering the number of ways data can improve projects. For instance, road investments can factor in how vehicles will respond, incoming traffic data scenarios, predictions of human behaviour in public transportation, and optimising CCTV camera locations to reduce traffic accidents and improve road safety.

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Laying a data foundation

Agencies should also be considering data flows, including the availability and quality of data in the context of their longer-term objectives and vision. Data will increasingly be at the core of future-proof resilient infrastructure, so this assessment stage is fundamentally important to long-term success. After all, data insights are only as good as the data that informs them.

The research found close to a quarter of respondents saw poor data quality around operational insights as a primary challenge during recent projects. Agencies particularly struggled to capture high-quality data on contractor performance and contract compliance, as they work through regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and other strictures specific to industry verticals or government functions. However, where agencies can enhance and expand their data capabilities, it is often to serve multiple areas of value, such as project oversight, contract management, citizen and customer experience, safety, schedule optimisation and tracking of sustainability metrics.

Partnering for success

Once data use cases and critically important datasets have been identified, agencies must determine what organisations to partner with. Breaking down silos and working with ecosystem partners reduces risk, as agencies can learn much from other entities that have implemented similar projects in the past. Moreover, ecosystems that are supported by mutually beneficial data platforms and agreements can facilitate faster development of solutions, while making it easier to put citizen needs and sustainability at the heart of all decisions.

Great waves of infrastructure spending as currently foreseen in many nations happen very rarely. Agencies should be seizing the opportunity to reimagine and expand possibilities, underpinned by sound data strategy, good digital tools, and the right ecosystem partnerships. The emerging wave of smart infrastructure should be highly resilient and aligned with sustainability and economic growth priorities. Digital and data capabilities need to expand rapidly to support infrastructure initiatives and are not likely yet receiving the attention deserved by this period of rare opportunity.

The post Rebuilding public infrastructure with digital capabilities post-COVID appeared first on Information Age.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for transport operators right now is tackling climate change, and this will set the agenda for 2022. Following the recent COP26 convention in Glasgow, sustainability is a key goal for the transport sector – and the pressure to act on this will ramp up as the government put plans in place to reduce carbon emissions across all industries by 78% before 2035.

The sector has its work cut out, however. Transport currently accounts for 27% of the UK’s total carbon emissions, making it one of the most carbon-intensive sectors – and 91% of this is generated by road transport vehicles.

To address these mounting concerns, taxi firms, delivery companies and other ground transport operators will all look to play their part as they a) reduce their own emissions, and b) find ways to help reduce the number of privately owned cars on our roads.

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E-fleets

This will see the rise of the e-fleet during 2022 as the sector embraces green vehicles, such as electric taxis and e-bikes. With more financial support available than ever before, transport operators will be able to take serious steps as they transition to electric vehicles (EVs).

Oxford city council, for example, has already announced a £5,000 grant for local taxi drivers purchasing an electric vehicle. And more recently, EV funding was also announced for taxi drivers in Greater Manchester to align with the city’s Clean Air plan.

With the government and local authorities supporting this “go green” agenda in transport, we expect to see initiatives such as these kick-start a movement away from petrol and diesel cars in 2022. These e-fleets will also play a crucial role in encouraging people to start leaving their private owned vehicle at home – helping to reduce the number of cars on the roads next year.

MaaS transport systems

While you shouldn’t expect private car ownership to be abandoned in great numbers in 2022, you will see this lofty ambition start to sprout green shoots – in the form of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS).

Across Europe, we are already seeing many countries investing resources into MaaS solutions which incentivise people to choose public transport. Austria, for example, recently launched a travel pass that allows commuters to hop between bus, tram, and train for just €3 a day. This is cleverly named the Klimaticket – or ‘climate ticket’.

The big challenge these MaaS services face, however, is providing a true “door-to-door” solution that will allow most people to leave their car at home. But this is where e-fleets can fill the gaps, by helping to join different forms of public transport together.

This may seem far-fetched, but the reality is that you are already seeing this vision manifest itself in apps such as Uber – which has already offered access to various forms of public transport alongside its ride hailing service.

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Rapid delivery services

Delivery is also an area where we expect to see the movement towards e-fleets grow. We’ve already seen this being trialled, with parcel-delivery company DPD making the switch to a fully electric fleet in Oxford. It’s estimated that by replicating this in more cities, DPD could reduce CO2 by 42,000 tonnes by 2025.

While third-party delivery companies offer retailers an efficient service, carrying as many as 320 parcels a day, this model is challenged when it comes to customers’ growing expectations they can receive deliveries within hours.

Sparked by lockdowns, which led to a 48% increase in online shopping, the “rapid grocery delivery” trend looks set grow in 2022. Grocery delivery company Getir, for example, built a fleet of almost 1,000 vehicles in 2021 to service this need – and is planning to spend £100m more to expand its offering.

Given the current driver recruitment crisis, which is currently affecting delivery and taxi firms, we are not expecting many other operators to invest that kind of money into building new fleets though. Instead, you are more likely to see retailers working with existing fleets. Currys, for example, recently partnered with Uber to provide its customers in London with 30-minute deliveries on products like laptops and ink cartridges.

Local options

You are also likely to see big brands and local businesses partnering with local taxi operators – which now also offer local delivery services – as they look to expand their offerings beyond London and move into the rest of the country.

This will work in a very similar way to how Uber is currently partnering with private hire operators around the country to tackle the driver shortage challenge, through its Local Cab product. If people no longer need to get into their own cars to collect shopping, these more local and rapid delivery options will offer another way to reduce vehicles on our congested roads right across the country.

And, if those needs are being serviced by e-fleets, we can expect to see the transport sector take some significant strides towards reducing the carbon footprint of all vehicles across the country next year.

The post Sustainability will be a key focus as the transport sector transitions in 2022 appeared first on Information Age.

As a fast-paced year for the mobility sector comes to a close, it’s clear that the rapid evolution experienced in 2021 is still in full flow. The emergence of EVs and digital transformation, alongside the long-term impact of COVID, have revolutionised personal travel. These developments bring with them innovation and opportunity, but they also create challenges for consumers, businesses, and local councils – especially in parking.

We reflect on how these challenges will likely manifest over the next year, and whether a single solution could provide the answer to some of 2022’s most pertinent parking issues.

Digital answers to parking frustrations

While the simplicity and convenience of digital solutions have done much to ease the stress of parking, there remain frustrations. A lack of facilities, the task of hunting for a spot, and a lack of payment choice are common pain points that feed negative perceptions. Today, drivers are demanding the same digital convenience for mobility as they do for broader consumer goods and services.

In 2022, these expectations will increasingly be met through open data networks. These will power AI powered navigation tools, providing real-time intelligence on parking availability, and precise locations to drivers via smartphone notifications or their own native infotainment system displays — with some models so digitally advanced that they could rightly be considered ‘smartphones on wheels’.

This new breed of smart vehicle is likely to be equipped with in-car payment solutions. Today, motorists must pull up, park, then fish out their phones to make a cashless parking payment. In 2022, this sequence will be far more streamlined for a lucky few, with their vehicles automatically taking care of all the payment legwork.

Outside of parking, open data networks will equip customers with vital information about a range of services designed to build convenience into their journeys; EV chargers, accessibility for disabled drivers, and air quality information, to name but a few. This will meet driver expectations and result in a positive shift in public attitudes towards parking.

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Embracing digital competition

While the days of hunting for change to pay for parking are almost over, the friction associated with payment remains. Drivers expect digital experiences to be seamless, convenient, and intelligent. However, the volume and variety of parking providers has resulted in motorists having to download (or re-download) multiple apps, enter payment details, and fill out personal information repeatedly.

In many ways, duplicating apps is even more frustrating than having to dig out your last 20p piece. Instead, allowing multiple digital parking providers to operate in the same car park should be considered a convenient and strategic option for the coming year.

Competition is healthy, driving parking providers to up their game in ease-of-use and accessibility. Instead of navigating numerous different apps, a single platform will let drivers select the payment service they most prefer, streamlining and de-stressing the parking process.

It’s good news for local authorities too. It will reduce the complexities and costs associated with tender processes and vendor switch outs, while helping to drive digital penetration as parking becomes easier for motorists.

Welcoming EVs as standard

Around one in ten new cars in the UK is electric, with uptake expected to soar over the next 12 months. Encouraging the switch to EVs will be supported by the legal requirement for new homes and businesses to have an EV charger installed from 2022. This can only be good news, given the imperative to act swiftly on global climate concerns and end the sale of fossil fuels in the coming decades.

As a result, 2022 will see growth of EV charging stations across the country. However, there are still some barriers to entry for would-be EV owners. A lack of charging service providers is a concern, as is the limited availability of high-speed charging point infrastructure. The absence of competition and a joined-up strategy between EV charging providers could inhibit the rapid acceleration of the required standardised infrastructure.

Hand-in-hand with EV charging is EV parking. Can these two essential elements be brought together? Drivers want the convenience of Plug-Pay-and-Play options, combining parking with charging while they go about their business – without having to set more aside time to ‘top up’ charge. To make this a reality, a streamlined digital system is required which allows motorists to pay for parking and charging simultaneously. We already see this taking place in Scandinavia today, and it must be a priority for the UK over the next 12 months, as we seek to mitigate climate change through cleaner transport.

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Supporting local COVID recovery

With continuing concerns around COVID safety, many people are still wary of using public transport and prefer the comparative safety of their car. In our post-pandemic recovery period, anything that discourages people from visiting our ailing town centres and cities must be avoided.

Penalising motorists with hefty fines or inflated parking prices is a blunt tool, which can backfire. While they may inject short-term cash for councils, high parking costs and fines are a disincentive to visitors at a time when local economies need steady, sustainable income. Councils must consider this balance carefully over the next year while we continue recovery.

An open solution to a complicated market

It may seem optimistic to suggest that one solution can alleviate these myriad challenges, but we believe it can. An Open-Market for parking – multiple cashless parking solutions operating in the same area – is already making great strides and proving popular overseas. A relatively new concept in the UK, it offers promise.

And inroads are being made. As part of the National Parking Platform’s first Open-Market rollout, motorists in Manchester can choose to pay for parking through one of four providers. This will incentivise parking service providers to innovate and offer the best possible experience, and it provides additional reliability and efficiencies for those managing the services.

As well as Manchester, and now Cambridgeshire, Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole, the Open-Market is set to expand yet further next year. This will help democratise data, with parking providers and third parties able to securely share and access important data points, driving better digital services. Such an approach is a no-brainer and should become the go-to strategy from 2022 and beyond.

The post Parking in 2022: could one digital solution solve its myriad of challenges? appeared first on Information Age.

With the wider rail sector being particularly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the collaboration between Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) and swiftscale aims to enable the continued development of technologies and data across the operator’s extensive supply chain and improve customer experience.

Through working with the network, GTR will look to advance its procurement activities, while bolstering collaboration with organisations across the rail sector.

Following assessment of GTR’s strategic needs, technology capabilities and current challenges, swiftscale will recommend companies that can meet these requirements.

With prospective partnerships focusing on emerging technology, areas that can be improved through collaboration with the swiftscale network include cyber security, analytics, procurement and supply chain management.

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“We’re pleased to kick off this exciting new collaboration with swiftscale to become the corporate partner for rail,” said David Gornall, commercial director at GTR.

“The opportunity to stimulate positive change in our extensive supply chain will be an essential driver for efficiencies in the future. Their global network of companies will act as a stimulant for positive change across our business.

“A continual push for innovation in procurement improves the operations of our business and as a result delivers a better experience for our customers.”

Alexander Sainty, co-founder and CEO of swiftscale, commented: “Rightly or wrongly, rail has previously had a reputation for being largely stuck in their ways.

“That’s why I’m particularly pleased to see GTR challenging the status quo. By proactively shaking up their supplier base and seeking out innovative startup solutions and services, GTR is a catalyst for positive change across their industry.”

GTR currently oversees four brands across London and south east England: Thameslink, Southern, Great Northern and Gatwick Express.

The post Govia Thameslink Railway joins swiftscale network appeared first on Information Age.

The transport and logistics sector is becoming increasingly digitised as supply chain management and visibility remain as important as ever, and both are key areas that can be improved by blockchain.

This feature will explore in detail the various use cases that blockchain brings to transport and logistics.

Product transparency

One general benefit that blockchain provides is transparency across supply chains, from production to distribution.

Aparna Jue, product director at IOHK, explains how food distributors in particular can benefit from the technology in this way.

“For consumers, the provenance of goods is becoming increasingly important,” said Jue. “They want to know where the products they choose have come from, and whether they have been produced and transported in ethical and/or environmentally sustainable ways.

“This is where blockchain comes in. Producers can use this affordable technology to address consumers’ requests for transparency, providing comprehensive information on the origin, production methods, supply chain journey and environmental footprint of their products.

“For example, IOHK is currently working with Wyoming-based Beefchain, whose blockchain-based software for supply chain traceability of beef products ‘from ranch to plate’ is the only US Department of Agriculture approved software of its type. Beefchain has worked with IOHK to harness our proprietary blockchain, Cardano, to trace the origin and movement of beef from farm to table.

“Through blockchain, consumers can access significantly more detail than ever before, from where and how a calf was raised – even down to who fed a cow on what day, though to how both the cattle and the beef was transported.”

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Jitendra Thethi, blockchain lead at Altran, expanded further on the added transparency that blockchain can provide to customers.

“Provenance uses a blockchain to register every step of the production process,” he said. “This ensures that the transfers of ownership are explicitly authorised by their relevant controllers without having to trust the behaviour or competence of an incumbent processor.

“For the different participants in the supply chain, different software solutions exist to access the blockchain, to extract the relevant information for this participant and to confirm the step in the production process. Afterwards, the buyer can scan the product, whether this be via a QR-Code or NFC, and access the information from the blockchain to check every step of the production process.”

Bridging the gap between smaller and larger vendors

In addition, Jue went on to explain how blockchain can level the playing field across sections of food and beverage logistics.

She said: “If we think about the coffee industry, for instance, smaller coffee farmers in countries like Ethiopia may lack the capital to invest in the traceability solutions needed to complete traceability from source to supply. This is not the case for larger coffee producers, who not only have access to more resources, but also to the latest technologies.

“While larger farmers are able to use their access to secure certificates concerning the sustainability, traceability and provenience of their coffee beans, smaller farmers lack access to the technology needed to store these records, but without them multinational companies are unlikely to select them as suppliers. As a result, the space is dominated by a few large suppliers.

“By using blockchain in sectors like coffee and agriculture, all farmers need to access traceability solutions is a basic GPRS-enabled mobile phone, of the type that have been available for 20 years. With one of these, farmers can become part of a global network.

“Blockchain, by enabling them to evidence the transportation and traceability of their products via a phone app, therefore ensures the removal of layers of proverbial middle men. This connects SMBs with major supply chains in a secure, transparent manner that fosters economic growth.”

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Logging and authenticating goods

Blockchain within transport and logistics can also be used to settle agreements between vendors and distributors, without the need for paperwork.

“Blockchain has been used to log and authenticate goods, shipment receipts, and other aspects, which in turn triggers payments,” said Thethi. “If a component has GPS capabilities, location enforcements can be in effect, just as other means of enforcement are possible using various sensors.

“For example, IBM and Maersk tested blockchain in shipping container tracking. The goal was to reduce effort and paperwork.

“Through the blockchain-based platform, they can access and act upon relevant information. Shippers, freight forwarders, ocean carriers, ports and customs authorities can be future participants.”

Location intelligence

For distributors, knowing where their products are at any one time is vital, and this is another area where blockchain can be of assistance.

Erminio Di Paola, vice-president, transport & logistics applications at HERE Technologies, explains how combining location data with blockchain can increase accuracy.

“Adding location intelligence to blockchain provides numerous benefits for transport and logistics,” said Di Paola. “By layering reliable location data with the intrinsic security of the blockchain distributed ledger function, it provides 100% certainty that an asset is being used at the right place, at the right time, by the right person.

“In the context of a large-scale shipping operation, for instance, there may be thousands of containers filled with millions of packages or assets. Using a system that can track every asset with full certainty, any concerns can be eliminated about whether the items are where they are supposed to be, or if anything is missing.”

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Fraud detection

Lastly, blockchain can be utilised within fraud detection practices, with it being able to help distributors determine the legitimacy of delivery details.

“Layering mapping capabilities and rich location data to a blockchain record also enables fraud detection,” continued Di Paola. “Without blockchain, it cannot be certain that the delivery updates provided are in fact accurate.

“Blockchain makes transactions transparent and decentralised, enabling the possibility to automatically verify their accuracy by matching the real location of an item with the location report from a logistics company.

“As every computer in the network has its own copy of the blockchain, this helps to eliminate a single point of failure or fraud.”

The post Blockchain use cases within transport and logistics appeared first on Information Age.

The intersection of cities, technology, and data dominates our world. Cities have long been the engine for global growth, and they increasingly rely on technology and data to run well. Unfortunately, despite more than a decade of buzzwords, from the ‘Internet of Things’ to ‘smart cities’, we still under-invest in understanding and using the data our cities create, and this is especially true for public transportation.

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For all the technological advances in recent decades, public transport policy prescriptions look basically the same as 80 years ago: build big, expensive subway systems, then run some large buses to complete a city-wide network.

Once built, this infrastructure tends to work well, but it requires decades of work and billions of dollars. It also comes with disadvantages. For one, covering an entire urban area typically means huge operating subsidies, often for many vehicles with few passengers, but that are needed to provide city-wide transport access. Attracting more passengers to low-ridership lines requires frequent service, which costs lots of money, and is hard to justify when ridership is low. Breaking this cycle is tough.

Secondly, the infrastructure is fixed in place. A subway or tram can’t be moved when housing patterns change, or if planners made a poor decision on where to put it in the first place.

Working public transport for the majority world

For emerging market cities that have yet to build out large formal transport networks, we suggest an alternative. In these cities, public transport is largely informal, made up of a huge route network of unsubsidised minibus-taxis, all run by independent operators. These networks transport about 2 billion people (often about 80% of the population) in emerging market cities each month.

Why strand these assets in pursuit of the shiny next step? Instead, relatively cheap upgrades (compared to building a new metro system) can make informal public transport the best way to get around town for everyone, hitting every goal for good public transport: safety, speed, affordability, and access for the entire city.

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Safety solutions are cheap, and fairly simple. Clear standards would go a long way. More important is a new payment model for drivers. The current setup compensates them for the number of passengers they collect, therefore requiring them to drive fast to make ends meet.

With a city-wide network of dedicated lanes, existing minibus-taxi fleets can be the fastest trip to just about anywhere in a metropolitan area. Even with no subsidies, informal transport already moves the majority world’s urban poor. Funneling just a bit of public funds to reduce prices could make it more affordable still, and a bargain for city governments compared to the 50-60+% operating subsidies that are common for formal urban bus and rail networks.

Since informal networks already cover most developing world cities, no upgrades are needed to reach nearly every urban resident. This is a big advantage over formal systems, for which there is a well-known trade-off between ridership and city-wide access. With constrained resources, cities face a choice between investing in service to serve as many people as possible (typically on main thoroughfares near a city’s core), or expanding service in neighbourhoods without it (typically low-density areas at the periphery).

With smaller vehicles running at lower operating costs, that trade-off doesn’t exist. Informal vehicles fill up with 12-16 people, rather than the 40 sitting passengers needed to fill a city bus. With much lower per km capital and operating costs, coverage is easily done.

Infostructure — the missing piece

To bring this all together, passengers must know how to use the network. They must know how long trips will take, what route options are available, and when vehicles are coming.

We use the term ‘infostructure’ to describe an informational layer that supports a city. Similar to infrastructure, it’s not an end by itself, but rather a foundation for a city that works well. An organised, centralised set of data can help residents make decisions in real time, then help policymakers make smart choices over the long term.

A city’s infostructure layer can inform all essential services, not just public transport. However, public transport infostructure is essential for this vision of a decentralised public transport to work. Vehicles must connect to the network, which must in turn be centrally managed to keep many independent operators working in unison.

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The result can be real-time information on vehicles, at stops, and on cell phones, giving passengers the power to move around their city. Drivers get a ‘passenger finder’, while operators get the data they need to fine-tune operations, economics, and efficiencies.

Residents get a well-oiled network that moves its earning population to and from the places where they get educated, earn money, spend money, and have fun. For most, that’s a much better deal than an expensive subway line that will take a decade to build, then requires several connecting trips (often to connecting bus lines) to reach the final destination.

Realising that vision is possible, but difficult. While cheaper than big, new infrastructure investments, building infostructure requires meaningful investments to hire and train people to manage a complex system.

That investment is worth it. With it, cities can chart a new path for asset-light public transport that delivers better lives for billions, and does so quickly.

The post Making transportation smart in emerging market cities appeared first on Information Age.

Transport and logistics, more than ever, is harnessing the power of data to ensure a quick recovery from the current pandemic. The sector has been among one of the hardest hit by Covid-19, and as use of public transport, as well as cars and coaches, has been greatly reduced due to lockdown, the industry faces a substantial rebuilding job as it tries to navigate its way back to prosperity.

“I started to see the impacts in early January, when a client from the aviation industry came and basically said ‘I’m closing down all the projects from the middle of January’,” said Theo Quick, global deputy industry head of retail, transport & logistics at Atos.

Sue Walnut, head of IT service for UK and Germany at National Express Group, spoke about how the pandemic had particularly affected the coach industry.

“Our white coaches have not run at all for several months in the UK. They’ve just started reoperating, but this has had a big impact” said Walnut.

“Our urban bus operations have seen huge falls in patronage, and although we have continued throughout the pandemic to transport key workers and other people who are able to do it, the biggest concern that we have is how the government in particular are looking to balance the clean air that everybody’s been celebrating, with their contradictory messages telling people to avoid taking public transport. So that is probably our biggest challenge going forward.”

However, at a recent transport and logistics roundtable organised by Information Age and Information Builders, a variety of effective use cases for data within transport and logistics were revealed.

Discussing how Information Builders have been able to help transport and logistics companies get the best out of their data, Gary Pemberton, the data and analytics provider’s pre-sales consultant, explained: “A lot of customers we talk to tell us about where they are today and where they have been, but they’re really trying to do is understand where they’re going to be going in the future, and we’re bringing information together to allow them to do that.”

Bill Harmer, senior vice-president EMEA at Information Builders, added: “Firstly, we help to give transparent shipment and delivery information to customers and partners in real-time. Secondly, we support supply chain management, alleviate potential issues, raise alerts, mitigate risks and help to avoid bottlenecks.

“Thirdly, we deliver predictive performance, identifying patterns, and predicting demand or changes in people’s forward supply chain activity.”

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Steve Bailey, senior solutions architect at Wincanton, addressed the shift to remote collaboration tools that most companies have had to undertake to accommodate staff working from home.

“From an organisational perspective, we’ve seen a fundamental shift in the technology we use. It’s been interesting to see how Microsoft Office 365 has helped our drive to become a more collaborative workforce,” said Bailey.

“We’ve seen changes in colleagues’ behaviour patterns, where they are able to maintain 20-40 projects at any one time. Using collaborative tools and data has certainly helped us to deliver a better service for our customers.”

Adapting to change

A prominent takeaway from the discussion between sector experts was how quickly the industry has had to adapt to the circumstances, which has made planning for future practices more difficult.

“The pace of change is the fastest it’s ever been in human history,” said Dan Myers, managing director UK&I at XPO Logistics. “But the direction is less predictable. Who would have thought we would be where we are today, six months ago?

“I think what our digital infrastructure does is demonstrate our ability to adapt very quickly. It’s provided that agility we’ve needed as an organisation.

“We’ve built things in a matter of days that we never envisaged having to create. Right now, it’s still difficult to see what the new normal will look like, and because that’s less clear to us, the need to pivot and change quickly will be the difference between success and failure.

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“XPO has been investing about $550 million in technology annually and recently launched a new ‘points of interest’ GPS-based map function for its Drive XPO mobile app for truck drivers. This is to help commercial truck drivers find truck stations and amenities that are nearby and operating, avoiding closures caused by COVID-19 restrictions.”

Simon Reed, head of technology and data, surface transport at Transport for London, added: “You couldn’t have foreseen the changes that we’ve seen recently where trends in the next five to 10 years just happen in three months. Cash: gone, working from home: mandatory. It’s just happened.”

Fragmentation

Reed went on to discuss how TFL has managed fragmented data sources: “It (our data sources) are definitely not cohesive due to the size of operation. We have a lot of stovepipe operational system implementations, and the tools we use to monitor the bus service, road service, trams and taxis are all line-of-business applications, and everything we do produces a phenomenal amount of data.

“The key to managing this is getting that data together into a form of data that others can use, to get the results of your operation. With that, we have a small team who takes that data ingest to a single place and translates that to the needs of directors and the DFT.

“This (reporting) is a lot about origins and destinations. What you find as an operator is you’ve got control of this on your own closed network. What we’re having to do as the transport authority is join those network dots up, so if someone uses both multiple modes of transport, we have to report the origin and destination over all of those networks.

“It’s been less about having one system, but about having one team with access to the right level of data, then they can apply the right algorithms across all sources.”

Continuing on the topic of fragmented data, Simon Rennie, head of digital at Siemens, added: “In our world, there are 3000 different assets all running around the network, so it’s a question of how to create a common view of everything that brings together the data that’s relevant for operators and passengers, so that our own teams and third parties can develop software to deliver insight. It’s absolutely vital.”

Bouncing back

Simon Mardle, principal at Capgemini, talked about the requirements needed for the transport and logistics sector to successfully respond to the Covid-19 crisis.

“We were already living in a complicated world, and I think it’s just got even more complex,” he said. “We’ve been used to optimising processes that have been in place for many years, but now we have many new ones that need to be refined and improved to ensure they are efficient and effective in dealing with our new normal requirements.

“Customers are now looking for new and different services, whether this be through a shift to online shopping, or different types of product provenance and visibility to boost customer confidence in the products they purchase.

“What the future of technology could bring us is an opportunity to deliver a win across customer concerns, and help us go faster than we’ve gone before, but in addition to delivering new technology in a more agile way that can be integrated in bite-sized chunks, we also need to think about the environment staff are working in, so that we can leverage that technology and get the best from it.

“There’s also a mindset shift required throughout the industry to make it more data-driven than ever before, and to do that, you have to trust in technology and the data that feeds it. This is a challenge in itself when technology is fed with inaccurate data; this can cause people to lose confidence and fight technology rather than work with it.”

According to Quick, it could take time to build confidence back up within the sector, but AI and IoT can boost this aspect.

“If you look at the cruise line industry, a lot of how they’re going to put that confidence back in is through technology,” he explained. “As we start to come out [of the pandemic], businesses are starting to embrace IoT a lot more, implementing this into IoT enabled hand sanitisers. There’s nothing worse from a public perception point of view than turning up to a hand sanitizer provided by an organisation and finding that it’s empty.

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“Vision AI technologies can be used for remote temperature checks as people are going in, and for enforcing social distancing. We’re starting to see a lot more of these discussions being held with clients who aren’t operating yet, but are starting to think about how to embrace this.

“We’re also working with an airport group who are starting to build help kiosks with 100 different languages provided using AI. They’re rolling those out now, even though the airports are closed.”

Harnessing and monetising data

Harnessing data within for transport and logistics firms, according to Graeme McDermott, chief data & analytics officer at Addison Lee, this can be achieved through effective challenging of how staff use reports.

“I think that teams should find the time to challenge people on how they’re using reports,” said McDermott. “In a previous company, we carried out an Excel-based exercise where we’d ask recipients to complete a spreadsheet and state how often they look at reports.

“In the back end of new tools, we could see who was using those reports and visualisations, versus when you ask people if they’re using them, you know they haven’t opened [the report] for three weeks or three months. This way, you save time and can switch unneeded reports off.”

Cassandra Moons, data protection officer at TomTom, meanwhile, talked about the idea of feeding data to customers and regulatory bodies using various channels.

“We feed real time traffic services to our automotive customers, using our in-dash navigation system, and we need to be sure that the quality of the output is really high and accurate at all times,” said Moons.
“To maintain that, we also need to be sure that the quality of the input is maintained throughout the whole process, and by establishing a continuous feedback loop.

“As you’re driving with TomTom products and you authorise sharing of information with TomTom, you also contribute to accurate up-to-date traffic information, such as traffic jams further down the road. This also helps drivers know the best routes and their estimated times of arrival.

“Looking at data quality from a regulatory point of view, data such as personal details needs to be accurate, collected and maintained in line with GDPR, and must be corrected if it’s inaccurate and no longer kept than necessary.”

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Knowing how to monetise the data at a company’s disposal is bound to be vital for recovery from Covid-19, and according to Tom Pigden, commercial director at Optrak, this requires some creativity.

“There’s too much of a feeling of ‘Things are working well enough as it is’, and not enough innovation,” said Pidgen. “We would love customers to come and say ‘We’d like to try this’, but sometimes they can be scared of it because they haven’t realised all the possible questions they could be asking, and they’re worried that they’ll get a high quote back for the work.

“In terms of doing something new [in route planning], you can start using information to drive contract negotiations. The best organisations are the ones that come up with creative ways and challenge their providers to do something interesting development-wise.”

The post Information Age Roundtable: The power of data in transport and logistics appeared first on Information Age.

As the Covid-19 pandemic caused significant impact across the world, the supply chain industry in the UK was not alone in seeing the dynamics of its business change rapidly.

In the early stages of the crisis, as the general public faced lockdown, the manufacturing industry found itself in steep decline, with many plants shutting their doors, while the grocery and healthcare supply chains faced unprecedented demand and huge growth in volumes.

In normal times it’s important to have oversight and visibility of the supply chain across industries, but the rapid and simultaneous nature of these changes highlights just how critical this is.

While many supply chain management software systems exist, the pandemic highlighted the strength of data visualisation, and in this case the need for a data visualisation tool that could bring together huge amounts of information from across many sectors, covering everything from human resources to physical assets, in order to support the decision making process.

In the first weeks of crisis response the DHL Supply Chain team set out to quickly design something that did just this, providing oversight at both a national and regional level, and enabling those managing supply chains to quickly and efficiently redeploy resources to support the evolving needs of the business. While the tool itself was designed to fulfil a particular purpose, it has potential applications beyond these circumstances, and the learnings provide useful insight for those working with data and systems design in other applications.

1. Identify business priorities to ensure relevance

In the early stage of the pandemic response it became clear that there were several critical areas of business that needed to be prioritised, including the replenishment of stock for grocery and convenience retailers. Likewise, as restrictions were imposed, several operations began to shut down. As a result, our customers and employees needed us to understand the opportunities for the redeployment of resources in order to support these fluctuations.

To do this successfully, the team working on the development of the tool needed to be plugged in to the wider business to understand where volumes were a challenge, the location and availability of resources, and importantly understand the skills available.

This allowed us to design a tool that provided the correct level of analysis and insight, and produced the data needed to help those managing the redeployment. As the tool evolves it’ll be important to continue regular communication with the end user to ensure it remains relevant to their needs. For example, as new regions start using it their unique requirements will need to be considered and catered for.

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2. Design with the end user in mind

The downfall of a new system can often be its complexity or the expectation of a certain level of prior knowledge. As we knew that users of the tool would come from different backgrounds and wouldn’t necessarily have the same level of IT or supply chain knowledge, it was imperative that the resulting data could be articulated simply and in layman’s terms.

Fundamentally the output of the tool needed to be understood by people outside the business and with no previous supply chain understanding. To achieve this, we integrated geographical mapping into the system, as presenting data in a visual way can be a useful way to simplify complex data.

For teams looking to introduce new tools and systems in the future it really is essential to consider the end user and the end use at every stage of the design process to ensure its fit for purpose.

3. Success is a journey, not a destination

Our prototype was created in less than ten days, but is already being considered for global rollout, and as this happens, the specific requirements of the tool will change and broaden. At the beginning of our process, the tool only offered a top-line overview, looking at vehicle type and warehouse or transport workers. Very quickly we realised we needed to provide more detail, and so integrated information on the skill levels of each individual across the business, as well as equipment type.

As we continue to build and develop the tool, we anticipate additional levels of data will be added to accommodate the specific needs of each region and business unit. Looking to the future we also see the potential for a degree of predictive analytics to be built in.

Ultimately, the long-term value of a tool like this is undeniable, but it will only be maximised if the teams managing them keep one eye on the future needs and strive to continuously improve functionality.

While our mapping tool was pulled together as part of our business’ response to the Covid-19 crisis, it has already shown itself to have potential value far beyond this event thanks to the work of the responsive and collaborative team driving it forward.

Any new model or tool needs to be relevant and responsive to the needs of the end user and keeping this in mind will ensure success regardless of how short the delivery timelines are.

The post Achieving critical supply chain visibility during the Covid-19 pandemic appeared first on Information Age.

Businesses need an effective and efficient supply chain in order to succeed in today’s landscape. However, inefficiencies in the supply chain can lead to lost opportunities and even product waste, which calls for better quality control.

In the food industry, for example, handling and transporting perishable goods such as fresh produce requires maintaining climate conditions. Slight changes in temperature and humidity levels can cause spoilage or contamination. Around 1.3 billion tons of food is lost and wasted across the supply chain.

The pharmaceutical industry experiences similar issues. Many of their raw materials and products are also climate sensitive. As such, the industry relies heavily on climate-controlled supply chains or cold chains. Any issues that arise in the transportation of these goods can affect product quality and safety. Yearly, the industry loses around $15 billion because of cold chain issues.

Thus, enterprises are keen on improving supply chain quality control to arrest continued losses due to waste. Condition monitoring startup Logmore aims to contribute to this through its data logging service. Its QR tags can monitor various information about shipments such as temperature and humidity, allowing companies to immediately identify and resolve issues even while these packages are in transit.

“When we started researching this three years ago, we wondered how no one else had come up with using dynamic QR codes for data logging. Combined with optimal timing in regards to efficient, available technology, this became a real once in a lifetime opportunity,” Logmore CEO Janne Juhala said.

The Finland-based company recently concluded a successful €4.5 million Series A funding round led by NordicNinja VC. The funding will be earmarked to expand the company’s market in North America, Asia, and Europe.

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Problems in the supply chain

Due to prevailing issues in the supply chain, regulations have been put in place to help companies minimise waste and ensure that their products are safe to consumption. For example, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has established seven major rules for the management of the food supply chain. It includes guidelines that require food will be kept safe from contamination during transportation and distribution.

Despite these guidelines, there are still gaps in the supply chain that expose consumers to health risk. For example, oyster shipments that require compliance to safety standards in the US were recently found to be exposed to unacceptable temperature levels that could cause foodborne illnesses. Shipments went outside the required temperature range during air travel to the point where they can be unsafe to consume. Blind spots in the supply chain can be detrimental to the public’s health and can cause an erosion of consumer trust.

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The regulations for the delivery of pharmaceutical goods are far more stringent. Manufacturers and distributors have to comply with many regulations from different regulatory bodies across countries. Non-compliance can result in penalties and cargo spoilage and disposal, leading to wastes. Dealing with these issues also mean increase costs for companies.

How shipment monitoring helps

Considering the cost and health risks caused by faulty supply chains, companies should look for ways to improve their supply chain visibility and quality control.

Companies can use solutions such as Logmore to track their shipments and ensure product quality throughout the supply chain. Logmore provides QR tags that can be integrated to containers and packages and log various condition data such as humidity, temperature, shocks, tilt, ambient light exposure, and GPS location. Measurements are immediately uploaded and updated into Logmore’s cloud-based portal.

Logmore’s tags do not require USB ports or wireless connectivity to extract data from the tags. Users simply need to use a mobile device camera or a QR scanner to scan the dynamic QR code which contains all the data about the shipment. This is useful especially for air freights which can limit the types of equipment and sensors that can be used in-flight.

Companies can check their shipment status, identify issues and make adjustments to avoid them from recurring. The feature also helps companies meet standards that require documentation of shipment status throughout the supply chain.

With its successful funding round, Logmore looks to scale its operations and improve global supply chains.

Improving Quality Control

Companies are faced with the challenge of monitoring and ensuring the quality of their products throughout their supply chains. Failure to spot issues can lead to spoilage, waste, and even public health risks. The availability of condition monitoring solutions such as Logmore come as a welcome development as improvements in the supply chain results in safer and even more accessible products for consumers.

The post Logmore boosts supply chain quality control using condition monitoring appeared first on Information Age.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, much of the world’s aviation industry has been frozen and fleets grounded. With supply chains around the world being cut off, organisations have needed to innovate their supply chain strategies in order to reach remote locations. As a result, the use of autonomous flying drones has accelerated in a humanitarian effort to beat the crisis.

Zipline, a US-based start-up, is using contactless drone delivery to transport COVID-19 test samples in remote locations across five African countries. Local officials in Chile have launched a pilot drone programme to deliver medications to people living in remote rural areas. This is the first time that drones have been used to deliver COVID-19 test samples and medications, but could autonomous flying drones disrupt the transportation industry, beyond emergency humanitarian operations?

Gartner predicts that in 2026, more than one million drones will be carrying out retail deliveries, up from 20,000 today. The growing adoption of autonomous flying drones will force CIOs in the mobility and transportation industries to rethink their business and operational models to exploit new forms of air mobility and remain competitive.

Autonomous drones offer lower cost per mile and higher speed than vans in last-mile deliveries. When they deliver parcels, their operational costs are at least 70% lower than a van delivery service.

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Upgrade your supply chain technologies

Flying drones and robotaxis will enable faster transportation of people and goods, however in order to achieve this CIOs must include air mobility in their supply chain strategies to remain competitive.

Organisations must determine and provide the technologies necessary to introduce autonomous drone delivery as part of their supply chain, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML); adding them to the roadmap and future budgets.

Full drone automation, as well as shorter fulfilment times, demands the adoption of full digital tracking and location systems for packages, improving the item location tracking of the supply chain. Precise tracking can be delivered by choosing RFID and location-based services.

Redefine your business model

Spanish auto manufacturer SEAT uses drones to fly airbags and steering wheels from a supplier to its Martorell factory. A truck would take 90 minutes from order to delivery, but the drone can make it in just 15 minutes.

Last year, DHL launched a fully automated and intelligent smart drone delivery solution to tackle the last-mile delivery challenges in urban areas of China. DHL states that the service reduces delivery time from 40 to eight minutes for an eight-kilometre distance and can save costs of up to 80% per delivery, with reduced energy consumption and carbon footprint compared with road transportation.

The drone’s high speed, lack of traffic restrictions and low environmental impact means it can easily outpace land transportation. The technology has limitations such as the payload

and delivery range, but the automotive industry’s major push toward electrification will produce new technologies that can easily be adopted in drones.

Inevitably, the growing adoption of autonomous delivery drones will force land transportation companies to incorporate air mobility into their supply chains to remain competitive. However, to stay competitive, the company’s business and operational models must evolve to fully leverage air mobility. For instance, the need for fast and frequent deliveries during COVID-19 are an opportunity for companies to start a drone delivery service that meets customer expectations more effectively.

Beyond the pandemic, companies can consider autonomous flying drones as an opportunity to offer a premium service such as a fast delivery option. Overall, the success of flying drone deliveries depends on a company’s ability to change its business model to make the most of the possibilities enabled by the technology.

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Consider legislation before investing in flying drones

While technical constraints exist, the most serious inhibitor for the deployment of autonomous flying drones is legislation. The most significant regulatory development that will make autonomous drones more viable is the rollout of drone-specific air traffic control systems called unmanned traffic management (UTM) systems. These technologies provide air traffic controllers full visibility over who uses the airspace, as well as automates processes to handle associated flight requests and permissions.

Regulators, such as the FAA in the US, will be gradually enabling new UTM features, but in most major markets, their implementation can be expected to take several years.

The regulatory framework is one of the main obstacles to the mass deployment of delivery drones. Gartner does not expect routine, large-scale autonomous drone flights to be feasible before 2025.

Prepare for the future of autonomous flying drones

The inevitable disruption to the transportation industry is set to alter the way organisations operate their supply chains moving into the future. In order for organisations to improve efficiencies and remain competitive, businesses will be required to evolve their business models to allow for air mobility.

As governments look to regulate this new sector whilst also encouraging innovation and emerging technologies such as the rapidly-developing drone market, it will become essential to follow these regulations imposed in regions of operation. Transportation organisations must plan in advance the technological investments, whilst budgeting for the deployment of regular autonomous delivery drone services to benefit fully from them.

The post The surge in drones and how they could disrupt mobility and transportation appeared first on Information Age.

Data is being generated at unprecedented and exponential levels. By all accounts, the data economy is booming, or is it? Unlocking data in enterprise systems and gaining value from it remains a significant challenge, but it can be overcome with “hard graft”, as Murray Leach — head of infrastructure projects systems and supports at Network Rail — explained during his presentation at Big Data LDN.

Unlocking data in enterprise systems: a Network Rail case study

Network Rail is responsible for the infrastructure across the UK railway system. It spends £130 million every week on improvements for passengers and 22% of the UK’s entire infrastructure spend is delivered by Network Rail — it is Britain’s biggest builder, supporting 117,000 jobs throughout the supply chain.

The company, like so many, has amassed a huge amount of data. And by using it, “we can say what we did last month very accurately,” said Leach. “The problem is we’re not very good at using it to look into the future.”

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1. Data organisation and consolidation

Responding to the challenge, Network Rail’s infrastructure projects are on a journey to become more data-centric. Part of this journey was to develop a ‘single version of the truth’ based on reports and the organisation’s large data warehouse, which impacted three key areas; business operations (using data to make business work better), report consumers (allowing project managers to look at the relevant data and make decisions) and analytics experts (to help them do their job better).

There were some common pain points that hindered this process; siloed reporting, departments, regions and executives not singing from the same hymn sheet was the problem and the process was frustrated by the inconsistent use of data.

However, the start of the data journey did glean some results; “over the last three years we have been able to work in a more controlled and automated way and improve the quality of our data from 55% to 90%. Reporting, as well, has moved from Excel and Powerpoint, and is now more specific — it takes you down to source of data,” revealed Leach.

“We wanted more”

‘Simply’ consolidating Network Rail’s existing data for analysis was a start. But, “we wanted more,” continued Leach. And, by more, he meant the organisation wanted to unlock the value of data through machine learning (and artificial intelligence) and prescriptive analytics to predict the future — to understand where projects might succeed or fail, and what could be done to ensure the latter doesn’t happen.

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2. Accessing the value of enterprise data

Network Rail began the next phase of its data-centric journey by investigating it’s existing projects and “the information suggested there were kernels of good analysis,” according to Leach. From there, it moved to a proof-of-concept focusing on a machine learning approach.

“Critical outputs with significant data quality were used first; we cherry picked areas so that we could show the most immediate value, initially,” he explained.

But, even this approach encountered challenges. “The POC had to be adapted on a weekly basis to meet different group requirements.”

Network Rail has been going through a devolution process, which creates more challenges in utilising data

3. Start small and add value quickly

As with any IT project, Network Rail realised it was important to start small, ‘fail fast’ and add value quickly; create a focused value chain, use operational data, bridge the imagination gap and then combine process and analytics to add value to that chain.

It used Oakland Group for this, which helped “deliver the answers that we needed regarding the POC — cost and volume, risk data and next steps,” said Leach. “We added value to reporting, improved ad hoc queries and in terms of linking data from machine learning.”

Network Rail’s machine learning model focuses on the interrelationships between source systems — schedule, costs, risks, funding, past performance, client and supplier.

“There is a need to automate those data feeds and identify which of them we should use on different projects, such as the construction of a new station, electrification, a new tunnel, improving bridges, land management or repairing railway lines after catastrophic event. We need to be able to classify those and differentiate between green and brown fields — ML and predictive analytics can tell us about this.”

— Leach

A question then arose; “do we use large datasets for people to access or use a controlled dataset?” asked Leach.

With the severe implications for poor data management and governance, many — including Network Rail — would select the latter. This lends itself to a self-service model, where users can access certain levels of datasets. For this to work, principles need to be established; an understanding of the value chain, what the organisation has in terms of labelled data and a data dictionary that can be used to define different classifications.

“When it comes to data, getting the access rights and accessibility of it covered, is a [necessary] challenge,” confirmed Leach.

The data journey and machine learning challenge

Network Rail was used to managing data that came into reports, but when the organisation moved into predictive analytics and machine learning, it had to use normalised data in a different way. “This takes awhile to get your head around that,” explained Leach.

It also led to a number of challenges; grounding the solution in the real world, overcoming noisy data, automating manual processes and data management, locating sparse data and managing the changing technology and vendor landscape.

“It’s a question of adapting to those challenges and managing hype when using data in a bigger and better way,” he continued.

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Clint Hook, director of Data Governance at Experian, looks at how organisations can automate data quality to support artificial intelligence and machine learning. Read here

Actionable insights

Since embarking on this data journey some actionable insights have been delivered; improved ‘in Year’ forecasting, targeted assurance activity (where employees have used periodic data and data from the POC to provide assurance across a wider range of areas), process compliance and improved data quality working and unlocking reporting with advanced analytics.

Key reflections from Network Rail’s data journey

1. Link process, people and tech
2. Start small and add value quickly
3. Pick your battles — find good data
4. Tech is only part of the solution
5. Proactively manage expectations
6. Don’t underestimate the change (or the value)

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