Innovation 7 min
FTMAAS: dealing with roadworks in your route planning
What if your TMS already predicted traffic congestion and you adjusted your planning to it in good time? In the FTMAAS project we connect logistics and traffic management.
Roadworks in your route planning
Roadworks: as a transport operator you deal with them every day. Before you know it your driver is stuck in an endless traffic jam and your planner is working overtime to still find a way to deliver all the cargo on time. How nice would it be if your TMS had already predicted that congestion and you had adjusted your planning to it in good time? TU Delft Professor Lóri Tavasszy, with whom we work on the FTMAAS project, is glad to tell you how we are trying to make this possible.
A promising experiment in the transport sector
FTMAAS stands for Freight Traffic Management As A Service, in other words ‘traffic management for freight transport as a service’. Lóri: “Together with Filogic and all kinds of other parties, under the name FTMAAS we are trying to connect the worlds of logistics and traffic management. How? By figuring out how traffic information can be used intelligently for logistics purposes. Think of transport planning and execution, warehouse layout and the course of manufacturing processes.”
Combining traffic and logistics data
Before FTMAAS came into being, the worlds of logistics and traffic management developed separately from one another. “Three years ago we started shaping this subject together with Rijkswaterstaat. That government body is of course responsible for everything around Dutch traffic: the flow, traffic management and road maintenance. We soon came to the conclusion that this has to happen in cooperation with the logistics sector. After all, it is the end user. By now the sector itself is also developing the necessary initiatives.” How else can the sector contribute to smart traffic management? “The most important thing currently missing is the right technology and data infrastructure. That is why we set up this ‘living laboratory’. But many more factors are at play, such as the processing of roadworks, which is still done manually. Only once this is automated can the transport sector make smart use of it. I hope that within a few years all transport operators will be able to anticipate predicted roadworks.”
More and more roadworks
But how big is the problem around roadworks, really? “This of course varies by region. SmartwayZ.NL, the leading innovative mobility programme in the south of the Netherlands, tells us, for example, that there are huge construction plans for the Brabant region that will cause a lot of traffic congestion over the next seven years. There are plans in several places in the Netherlands and in neighbouring regions too, such as on the Antwerp ring road. As a transport operator you want to be prepared for this, even if for now it is relatively manageable.” Janneke Nijsing of SmartwayZ.NL: “In the coming years there will be quite a few works on the corridor, and at the same time a fair number of smaller works are planned in the region. The information about these works is now available digitally. That way transport operators can take it into account in their planning. Both types of works are, after all, highly disruptive for the transport sector.”
Predicted roadworks in the TMS
The ultimate goal is for all roadworks and the traffic jams they cause, current and predicted alike, to be available in Filogic OpenTMS. “Once the processing of traffic data is automated, Filogic will be able to act extremely fast. After all, they offer an OpenTMS that lets you build in the connection in no time. As a result, transport operators, large and small, can effortlessly align their transport planning with the traffic information available. Planning ahead becomes easier, and the chance of cargo not being delivered on time is a great deal smaller.”
Sign up for FTMAAS
Are you already suffering quite a bit from roadworks, do you notice it getting busier on the road, or do you simply want to be prepared for the future? Then get in touch with Filogic. As a transport operator you can become part of our ‘living laboratory’, in which we experiment fully and your opinion as the end user is extremely valuable. That way you also have direct influence on the development of this solution. We always experiment outside normal business, so that your transport processes are not thrown into disarray. So if you are keen to help shape this major change across the entire transport sector over the next six months, and want to be one of the first to work with predicted traffic information, do let us know. There are still a few places available.
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