A
variety of pressures are leading a growing
number of companies to look for collaborative
transportation opportunities with other
shippers to get better access to capacity
and/or reduce transportation costs. Several
software companies already offer collaborative
capabilities.
Now, interesting
news that a submission from Deepak Sharma
of Tata Consultancy Services has won the
first phase of a contest sponsored by Microsoft
for the design of a “mashup”
(defined below), which just happens to outline
a collaborative transportation solution.
What is a
mashup? There is no specific definition,
but our take is that it is an offshoot of
the so-called “Web 2.0” movement
that uses a variety of technologies, such
as web services, to aggregate content using
the Internet from a variety of sources to
meet a specific information need or provide
a specific type of service.
In the Microsoft
contest (see The
Connected Services Sandbox), Sharma
submitted a design for a mash-up that would
“enable the concept of Collaborative
Logistics. The idea is to share unused capacity
in Trucks. Trucks which are not full can
communicate the available space to the Mashup
service, which will then broadcast the same
to Mashup service subscribers using SMS.
Similarly, a Truck Owner can broadcast his
unused space to subscribers through the
Mashup service.”
“For
small companies this will mean cutting high
costs of half full truck shipments.”
In summary,
this mashup would provide a web portal where
shippers could use a web service to easily
post shipping requirements, other shippers
could do the same looking for complementary
routes, and carriers could post capacity.
For small shippers, this might mean posting
they have a shipment going to a specific
city that will be 50% of a truckload, and
seek another nearby shipper with a load
going to the same basic destination.
Existing
collaborative solutions tend to target larger
shippers. This design, it appears, is more
specifically targeted at small and medium
sized shippers.
The content
continues as designs such as this move into
the “Build” phase. We’ll
keep you posted. |
