Horizontal collaboration: opportunities for improved logistics planning

Abstract

The logistics industry is a critical economic component in most countries and has a significant impact on their citizens' quality of life. In the U.S., 48 million tons of freight valued at more than $46 billion are moved every day and serve 300,000 manufacturing sites, 350,000 warehouses, and 7.5 million businesses. However, the industry is plagued with inefficiencies that can negatively impact corporate profits, the environment, urban congestion, and worker well-being. No single solution will address all of these issues; however, horizontal collaboration appears to offer an opportunity to take a significant step in the right direction. There is an abundance of opportunities for logistics service providers to collaborate, but there is little effective collaboration in practice, and the issues related to this gap remain largely unexplored by academic researchers. This paper offers a review of the existing research in horizontal collaboration, specifically highlighting efforts focussed in the areas of on-demand logistics, freight consolidation, facility sharing, incentives, case studies, and quantitative analyses. A path for pursuing an improved logistics system is offered, and specific research needs in the collaborative logistics field are detailed. We conclude with a discussion of emerging issues that will have immediate impacts on horizontal collaboration efforts.

Keywords:

• supply chain collaboration
• logistics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1331989, 1331997, 1332007, and 1332047. This work was also partially supported by grants from the Toyota Material Handling North America University Research Program and the MHI and College Industry Council on Material Handling Education Spark Research Program.