Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
(Gonzalez-Feliu and Morana 2011 ). According to Gonzalez-Feliu and Morana
( 2011 ), operational decisions are in general made individually. Tactical and stra-
tegic
decisions
can
be
made
by
different
actors
or
groups,
with
different
modalities:
• In non-collaborative sharing, the shared resources are managed independently
by their users, without any direct interaction between them. The actors involved
share infrastructures or vehicles, but each of them uses them for his own pur-
poses, without simultaneous sharing.
• Collaborative sharing with hierarchical decision-making is a further step in
collaboration where shared resources are commonly managed by their users. In
order to manage and guide the collaboration, a hierarchy is established, through
which the main decisions are taken by a manager or a small group of stake-
holders, with the others expressing their opinion but not taking part in planning
and management issues.
• Collaborative sharing with non-hierarchical decision-making is a more co-
operative approach where all the users take part in the decision processes.
Indeed, management can be sub-contracted or given to a third person, but all the
stakeholders are directly and equally involved in strategic and tactical decisions.
In the first and the second types of sharing, strategic decisions are taken by a
single decision maker. In the third type, these decisions are made by the members
of a collaborative group of actors, under a partnership contract or some other type
of agreement.
Sharing resources in freight transport is related to three main issues: vehicle
sharing, infrastructure sharing and route sharing. Concerning vehicle sharing, the
logistics organization is similar to that of car-sharing or bike-sharing systems for
the transport of persons (SUGAR project 2010). Indeed, a freight vehicle-sharing
system proposes a fleet of shared vehicles, and each user of the system can topic
and use a vehicle for their own purposes. In these systems, each user continues to
follow an individual organization scheme in which vehicles are shared, but each
user continues with his own transport schemes without merging them with those of
other users. The second approach is that of platform sharing (Rakotonarivo et al.
2011 ), without necessarily requiring collaboration between users. These two issues
have recently been studied in the literature (Simonot and Roure 2007 ; Gonzalez-
Feliu and Morana 2011 ). The third, least studied system, is that of logistics
pooling.
We can introduce freight transport pooling as the mutual and contemporary use
of a vehicle by two or more actors, all of them being well informed and having
direct influence on decisions concerning the relevant transport organizational
aspects. Note that the use of a freight forwarder or integrated logistics provider
(4PL, LLP) is usual in freight transport, but the responsibility and the decision
making are relayed to a third party, who assumes the consequences. Indeed, in
such transport and logistics schemes, the sender (or the receiver) hires a company
that organizes all the transport- and distribution-related operations, involving other
actors
like
transport
operators
and
logistics
providers.
This
company
takes
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