FLOX II - Freight Collaboration Platform, industrial research

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Freight in the UK is a £157bn industry that chronically suffers from capacity underutilisation, environmental damage and worsening transport congestion. The 2050 CO2 reduction target to zero demands radical approaches to management of logistics. Project FLOX-II aims to build, and test in a live environment, a prototype of a truly innovative Freight Collaboration Platform that will significantly simplify and actively facilitate inter-company collaboration through real-time identification of load matching and capacity sharing opportunities. Industry has, for years, been trying to address this challenge with a variety of initiatives that have to-date delivered limited results. Only recently have the multi-agent architectures and optimisation algorithm innovations paved the way for potential software platforms that can be used to automate solution finding, eliminating the need for manual orchestration and thus transaction costs for companies. That is why VCL initiated this project to build and subsequently trial a prototype of this revolutionary cloud-based platform. Several Local Transport Authorities and our industry partners have already expressed interest in supporting the project with their data and user feedback which will ensure usability, required functionality, performance and the target benefit delivery.