M.I. Piecyk and A.C. McKinnon
Logistics Research Centre
School of Management and Languages
Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh
EH14 4AS
August 2009
Green logistics
This report summarises the results of a Delphi survey of 100 logistics specialists which sought their views on future freight transport and environmental trends in the UK up to 2020.
According to this panel of experts, over 50% of companies involved in road freight transport operation are likely to see their activities affected by climate change concerns to a significant or large extent by 2015. This proportion is expected to rise to over 80% by 2020.
Some long-established production and logistics trends which exert a strong influence on road freight demand, such as the centralisation of manufacturing and inventory, the adoption of JIT replenishment and the outsourcing of non-core activities, cannot continue indefinitely. The results of the Delphi survey reported in this paper suggest that these trends are likely to continue at least until 2020. The following trends were identified as most likely to occur up to 2020:
• Further relocation of production capacity to other countries.
• Increase in primary consolidation of inbound loads to manufacturing plants and/or distribution centres.
• Significant growth in online retailing.
• Reverse logistics is likely to gain in importance with more products reentering the supply chains for recycling, refurbishment and resale.
• More frequent ‘out-of-hours’ operation, especially increase in proportion of night-time deliveries.
• Growth in the use of advanced IT systems for transport planning and management (telematics, computerised vehicle routing and scheduling, etc).
• Increase in logistical collaboration initiatives between companies.
• Greater use of online freight exchanges online and load matching services.
• Fuel prices and availability of drivers were identified as major threats to the road freight industry.
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