The aim of this study is to identify the innovations, technical as well as process-related, that have the largest positive impact on logistics performance. To that purpose, a scan is made of a wide array of innovations. Innovations are found in road transport, inland navigation, air and maritime transport, and also in for instance warehousing. The innovative character of a certain application in a certain section of a chain can also stem from the fact that the concept was applied before in other contexts, but not in that particular section. That is the case for GPS and GIS applications. The main research hypothesis states that at least a number of promisingconcepts can be identified that, based upon preliminary analysis, have benefits that offset the costs, and that are worth being investigated further. The innovative concepts are defined. It turns out that overlap in the concepts cannot always be avoided. Green logistics for instance is core, and interferes with among others reverse logistics, waste logistics and lastmile logistics. Examples are given of situations in which the innovative concepts have been applied, successfully as well as unsuccessfully. The examples confirm the mutual interference that exists among innovative concepts. Moreover, it is striking that some innovations, when implemented in isolation, are detrimental rather than beneficial to logistics performance, unless they are supplemented by other innovative concepts, so that synergetic effects arise. Implementing security for instance turns out to be veryresource-consuming compared to the benefits gained, unless technologies like GPS and RFID limit the efforts to be raised. EU legislation for example requests all online or postal command shippers to take back all unsatisfactory sales. An overall assessment is made and policy conclusions are drawn focusing on the concepts which have the highest merit from being further analyzed in detail, and eventually being implemented with government support. Among them, mainly process innovation concepts are found: green logistics, waste logistics, reverse logistics and last-mile logistics are the most prominent ones. An exception is inland navigation, which features a number of technological innovations that are groundbreaking and uncovered so far. Therefore, the research hypothesis is confirmed: innovation in logistics clearly has a number of niches which are worthwhile elaborating further. For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999
Samenvatting