Dear reader, since the start of the International Journal of Advanced Logistics now 4 years ago the domain of logistics has changed profoundly. Online retailers experience growth rates of 20% or more year after year. The success of online shops has triggered the drive towards highly automated warehouses, new overnight delivery service concepts, etc.
Web2.0 made it easier than ever to route goods through a network of transporters. Such networks need other optimization algorithms. The availability of global positioning solutions such as GPS, Galileo and Glonas have made logistics a real-time process with actors along the supply chain that know the location of each item of a shipment at any time, opening options for many innovative logistics services.
Connected Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) that use IEEE 802.11p, 4G and other wireless network technologies start to find their way to the market. C-ITS vehicle to infrastructure communication gives, as an example, transport trucks and cars the ability to synchronize their speed with road priority lights and save fuel, making road transport more efficient. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication can, as another example, warn for vehicles that approach a road crossing or create a safety hazard and reduce road incidents to a minimum. Infrastructure communication, including harbor and airport communication, makes it possible to better synchronize multimodal transport modes.
Autonomous cars and trucks and emerging Smart City transportation solutions hold the promise to transform a city into a smart hub with autonomous vehicles moving goods and people in the city. Drones and multirotor copters add new modes of transportation that have captured the interest of larger distribution networks, and when successful will transform logistics again. All these technological developments hold the promise to extend the city with moving autonomous vehicles that will do doorstep delivery and transform the sky to a gigantic warehouse with autonomous aircrafts moving goods around the globe.
Progress in battery technology and high-capacity super capacitors can make transport more energy-efficient and city-friendly. Continuous progress in high-speed train technology will make railway transport more attractive again and competitive with air transport.
These and many other disruptive technologies can be seen by some as uncomfortable and a threat for their business model, but it also creates opportunities for those organizations that recognize them in time and for new actors in the domain. In this exciting era for logistics the ambition of this Journal is to give priority to researchers that publish their progress beyond the state of the art in advanced logistics and to help professionals in the sector to recognize these developments and to make the right choices when rolling out advanced logistics solutions.
June 2016