Sources of competitiveness for logistics service providers: a UK industry perspective

Logistics Technology Forecasting Framework Using Patent Analysis for Technology Roadmap

The rapid advancement of digital technologies has fundamentally changed the competitive dynamics of the logistics industry. For players in the logistics industry, digitization has become an unavoidable situation to achieve survival and sustainable competitiveness. A technology strategy is essential for digitization, and identifying opportunities and threats of technology development through technology trend exploration is important for technology strategy. In addition, to enable the implementation of the technology strategy, it is necessary to detect the change in technology and search for the technology that is expected to have a practical development effect. The purpose of this study is to identify opportunities and areas for technology development through patent data in establishing technology strategies. Previous research mainly relied on the expert interview method, and there was also a patent analysis study based on topic modeling, but only to grasp technology trends. This paper aims to propose a new framework for the extension to the stage for establishing a technology roadmap. By using the Word2Vec algorithm, we will investigate the patent search formula that reflects the trend, the prediction of changes in logistics technology through LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) clustering of patent data, and the derivation of vacant technology by experimental methods. The proposed framework is expected to be utilized for predicting technological change and deriving promising technologies for establishing technology roadmaps in logistics companies.

Examining CO2e reduction within the German logistics sector

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the measures outlined in frameworks for guiding CO2e emissions reduction in road freight transport in the academic literature are actually being realised at a practical level.

Design/methodology/approach

– A qualitative evaluation is carried out of the transport-related CO2e measurement and reduction initiatives in the German logistics sector through ten case study logistics service providers. For each, senior managers are interviewed with the findings synthesised through content-analysis. The initiatives are evaluated against an accepted leading framework model used to categorise CO2e emissions reduction initiatives.

Findings

– The investigated firms, although at different evolutionary stages, understand that logistics and ecology do not, for the most part, contradict each other and both need to be considered in their companies’ long-term planning. The framework used to categorise CO2e emissions reduction initiatives in logistics provision is largely confirmed, but also refined.

Research limitations/implications

– The research reaffirms and refines frameworks developed to encourage and assess green logistics practice, in a specific country's (Germany) logistics industry.

Practical implications

– The analysis shows strong evidence that the options identified in theory are also valid for the German logistics service provider companies that were investigated. Most of the participating companies apply many of the operational options to reduce the environmental impact, although no one company is pursuing all the possible initiatives.

Originality/value

– There is a lack of empirical studies which assess the application of green logistics initiatives identified in academic literature to practice. This paper contributes to filling this gap.