University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Knowledge-enabled Access of Central Europe SMEs to Efficient Transnational Transport Solutions Prof. Flavio Bonfatti University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Department of Information Engineering Italy

SME transnational transport problems Limited contractual power Small volumes Infrequent transport flows Non-saturated transport means Scattered demand Few packages at a time On long and medium distances Cumbersome paper-based documentation A number of accompanying documents In different formats and languages

KASSETTS research objectives The KASSETTS project Funded in the frame of the INTERREG Central Europe programme Started in October 2008, lasting 36 months New ICT services to support SMEs in this field Demand aggregation and optimal route definition Identification of the most convenient transport solution Preparation, exchange and translation of transport-related documents Through a network of intermediary logistic coordinators Working at a regional scale, collaborating with each other Involving manufacturing and distribution companies Qualifying local transport service suppliers Improvement potential on environment +23% of average saturation index, -20% of kilometres

Research approach, methodology Based on background projects CORELOG: optimisation of logistic flows in the supply chain MATAARI: optimisation of logistic flows in industrial districts STIL: ICT services to promote on-line logistics at the regional scale SEAMLESS: automatic translation of exchanges business documents ENLoCC: promotion of the KASSETTS approach A local experience to exploit and extend The Logistic Broker, acting in the Modena province since May 2008 Some local manufacturing companies are involved Six carriers are qualified as service suppliers Twice a day planning of the aggregated demand www.mo.brokerlogistica.net

KASSETTS functional architecture LOGISTIC BROKER F C P D O M I C P User Company User Company Logistic Operator Logistic Operator Transport request Order confirmed Mission accepted Mission assigned Region A Region B

Operational scenarios Regional scenarios (one broker involved) Manufacturing company fleet planning Small logistic operator fleet planning Demand aggregation and planning Offer matching Demand matching Import/export of documents from legacy systems Trans-national scenarios (2 or more brokers involved) Joint mission computation Joint mission completion Multilingual document exchange

Logistic Sector Ontology The domain ontology Logistic Sector Ontology Focus on the knowledge exchanged between relevant actors Ready in English, under translation into 7 EU languages Czech, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Slovenian, Slovak Built in OWL with an extension of PROTEGE Facilitated web interface for term definition and translation Export in XML format Mapping between different XML formats with MAPFORCE ALTOVA Automatic translation service

Conclusion and outlook Ontology and application services are ready Candidate brokers are identified Pilot sites are being selected In the first half of 2010 seven pilots will be running And showing the benefits of interoperating with each other Further steps Now the focus is on regional and transnational road transport Demand aggregation and optimisation pave the way towards inter-modality Which now is typically out of the scope of the SME choices Extending as much as possible the opportunity of electronic document exchange and translation

For further information Please go to www.kassetts.eu Or contact flavio.bonfatti@unimore.it (scientific responsible) s.dondi@regione.emilia-romagna.it (project manager)