Urban Consolidation and Logistics Pooling - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 187

• Organisation. The physical and organizational conditions for freight compati-
bility can limit the development of a UCC. For example, the dimensions, type of
packaging, stock unit and the need for specific equipment for loading and
unloading operations will necessarily limit the cohabitation of two shipments on
the same vehicle or consolidation platform. Another organizational factor
related to the acceptability of transport carriers arises from the possible changes
they will make in their distribution schemes.
• Cost. If a transhipment implies organizational change, it also supposes cost
increases. Although some UCCs have found optimization schemes to reduce
these costs and impute similar costs to the transport operators, the question is
still controversial when planning and developing these platforms.
• Responsibility. The factors related to the transport operator's responsibility are
strictly set out in the contract established between the different actors. If the
collaboration between the partners and customers of UCC distribution systems
abides by a contract or a charter where the questions of responsibility are well
defined, it will not interfere with sharing. On the other hand, if these questions
are not clearly specified in a contractual document, disputes related to ill-defined
responsibility can lead to legal conflict.

The main issue for UCCs is to reach a cost-effective threshold that ensures the
economic balance of the logistics facility. Imposing a unique UCC operator does
not seem to be the most efficient solution, as shown by Gonzalez-Feliu et al.
( 2013 ), and other strategies have to be found. Collaboration is one of the most
promising areas of study in supply chain management and has started to be applied
to freight transport management. This collaboration can take place at different
stages as shown below (Gonzalez-Feliu and Morana 2011 ):

• Transactional collaboration: the first stage of collaboration consists of the
common coordination and standardization of administrative practices and

exchange techniques, requiring information and communication systems.
• Informational collaboration: the second stage concerns the mutual exchange of
information such as sales forecasts, stock levels and delivery dates. At this level,
confidentiality and competition have to be taken into account in the sharing of
information.
• Decisional collaboration: This category concerns different planning and man-
agement decisions (Crainic and Laporte 1997 ), and is divided into three stages:

- Operational planning, related to daily operations.
- Tactical planning, or middle-term horizon,involving decisions like sales
forecasts, route configurations, inventory management and quality control.
- Strategic planning, related to long term planning decisions such as network
design, logistics platform location, finance and commercial strategies.

Logistics sharing and logistics pooling are specific forms of resource sharing
(Gonzalez-Feliu et al. 2010 ). Although in a narrow sense the word ''sharing''
refers to the joint or alternate use of inherently finite resources, both material
and immaterial, it can also refer to the process of dividing and distributing