The faster groceries are in shops, the better it is for Albert Heijn. For that reason, among others, the supermarket chain wants to improve distribution. In cooperation with the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment and 12 regions, Albert Heijn wants to participate in the ITS project for intelligent transport systems.
Investment costs
The ministry and regional governments have jointly released a substantial amount of money to boost distribution for businesses. In total, over 70 million euros will be released for the ITS project until 2017. The main purpose why the money is being invested is to make (freight) traffic more efficient. Companies are losing a lot of money because trucks are stuck in traffic.
Collaboration and further development
The project the supermarket chain will collaborate on is part of the overall ITS project and is a further development of the Transport Control Tower, a neutral platform built by traffic and logistics software. That platform aims to share available information about trucks and their drivers in a unified way. The cooperation with the government should ensure that in the future there will be more clarity on, for example, road works and availability of loading and unloading bays.
Retail Control Tower
The Retail Control Tower set up last year is part of this and uses information from boord computers and planning information from the TMS solution. Albert Heijn says it sees many opportunities in the new project. "With this solution, our own logistics guidance is digitised with real-time information from the lorries, with which employees use our Transport Control Tower to guide the supply of our Albert Heijn shops in advance and en route, in order to make it as efficient as possible and with the least delay and local inconvenience."
More developments
In addition to these projects, the government is also developing trucks that drive independently. A driver is present, but no longer needs to drive himself. In addition, sharing information on road use should ensure that fewer incidents occur on the road. Both traffic management and other road users can benefit from the shared information and take better account of incidents. Ultimately, this should result in a 2.5 per cent drop in the number of incidents.
Editorial LogistiekProfs
