Visibility perspectives are among the top priorities for supply chains; a core issue towards more efficient operation and cooperation among the supply chain players, with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) playing a crucial role towards this direction.
Supply chain players cooperation relies heavily in ICT integration problems that still exist. For many ports supply chain visibility is an issue to be tackled in order to increase their attractiveness as nodes in supply chains.
PortEconomics member George Vaggelas – along with Eliza Gagatsi, Aifadopoulou Georgia and Morfoulaki Maria from the Hellenic Institute of Transport and Nikos Athanasopoulos from TRAINOSE (the Greek Railways company) – published a port study on the importance of ICT integration issues for increasing cooperative supply chain visibility in the International Journal of Advanced Logistics.
Through a case study at the port of Thessaloniki (the second major port in Greece) George and his colleagues examine the shortfalls in the existing supply chains as regards visibility and cooperation issues. Through the examination of two proposed intermodal corridors the paper identifies the gaps in the supply chains among the major players (shipping companies-agents, freight forwarder, rail operator, port authority and inland ports) and propose solution to overcome these deficiencies.
The study was published the authors’ version of the study can be freely downloaded @ PortEconomics.eu
