Emerging countries, cities and logistics

Martijn Lofvers — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:51:18 +0000

City logistics in emerging countries (like South America, India, China, etc.) is more challenging and of higher complexity than doing city distribution in Western regions (like Europe or North America).

This is not my statement but expressed by dr. Edgar Blanco from the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. Obviously, as a good academic, he also motivates this statement. In a nutshell, there are a number of reasons, all interacting with each other. The key reason is that the important logistical dimensions are completely different than what we are used to. Specifically, stores are much smaller (think of the size of a garage or smaller), there are really, really a lot of these stores. Added to this, the cities themselves are huge, at least in density (i.e. inhabitants per square meter) with the well-known problems related to congestion, emissions, etc. On top of this, due to a lack of trust in the chain, giving credit is not done, leading to a purely cash-driven supply chain.

Interesting, no? So how different is this to city distribution in the Netherlands or Belgium? I participate as professor Freight Transport and Logistics in the Dinalog funded project 4C4D (Cross Chain Control Centers for City Distribution). In this project, we look into coordination and consolidation in order to improve logistics flows into cities. Here, issues like retail ordering, sustainability (green zones), congestion, time windows, etc. are driving logistics’ efficiency. The focus of this research project is on Logistics Service Providers and retailers, leading to innovative distribution concepts based on sound business models, while meeting objectives and restrictions set by municipalities.

I wonder whether all these nice new innovative distribution concepts would survive in the city of Bogota. It seems that we in Europe and the US are used to a large amount of structure, data availability, and well-followed rules and legislation. Once, we take this out of the picture, the challenge is, next to new concepts, to find ways to set up a structure and the right information. So I would conclude, that city logistics in emerging countries is really harder but leads to richer business models than we are traditionally used to.

Tom Van Woensel, Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences and Board Member of the European Supply Chain Forum.

1609: The forgotten history of Hudson

Martijn Lofvers — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:39:08 +0000

With just a slight twist of fate, New York might have been called Nouveau Paris. The English sailor Henry Hudson, who sailed to America on the ship Half Moon four hundred years ago on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), was also at the time negotiating with the French King for the same journey.

Through a rich but embittered Amsterdam merchant named Isaac le Maire, who had been thrown out of the VOC, Hudson had provided the French with all the information which he had also given to the VOC about his previous expeditions to the North. A silent battle had been taking place to hire the explorer Henry Hudson. Dutch journalist and historian Geert Mak describes this fascinating intrigue in part one of his book ‘1609: The forgotten history of Hudson, Amsterdam and New York’, which is published by the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation and can also be downloaded for free.

The second part of the book deals with the events after Henry Hudson finally sets sail out of Amsterdam. Russell Shorto, a writer for The New York Times, presents a lively picture of what it must have been like on the Half Moon. He sees the threat of mutiny as the primary reason that Hudson neglected the VOC’s instructions to sail a north-easterly route around Russia and, instead, headed westward toward the newly discovered America. Hudson was convinced that this was the shortest route to the Sea of Japan. In those days, the best calculation of the size of the earth estimated it to be about one-third smaller than it actually is. Hudson first sailed to a friendly English settlement in what is now Virginia, before sailing up what we now know as Hudson River, which has tides and is therefore salty, under the mistaken belief that it was a passage that would lead to the Pacific Ocean. Once he and his crew discovered that the river was not, in fact, the much sought-after route to Asia, he sailed back to Europe.

On a subsequent voyage, Hudson’s crew finally mutinied and forced him and his son into a small open boat and set them adrift in what would later become known as Hudson Bay, where they are assumed to have died an icy death. Based on the discovery from Hudson’s first trip, the Dutch Republic had laid claim to a broad strip of land along the east coast of North America. The newly established West India Company established the colony of New Netherlands there, which encompassed five future US states, and it established the settlement of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Under the leadership of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, this tolerant melting pot of many nationalities flourished; it was granted a charter in 1653 – the official year that the subsequent City of New York was established. In 1664, English battleships appeared in the harbour of New Amsterdam and Stuyvesant reluctantly surrendered his command and the colony.

‘1609: The forgotten history of Hudson, Amsterdam and New York’ (2009), by Geert Mak and Russell Short, published by Henry Hudson 400 Foundation, 77 pgs. Free download at: www.hudson400.com (About Us, Projects & Events).

Supply Chain Movement » Netherlands

Emerging countries, cities and logistics

1609: The forgotten history of Hudson