SMART-PLANNING

At project structuring stage, the following four major observations emerged from various discussions between project partners and stakeholders in the Road Freight Transport (RFT) sector. Observation 1. Growth in competition and market developments oblige RFT companies to confront new situations (more stringent customer requirements in terms of delivery windows, higher delivery frequencies with lower volumes, etc.), which constrain organisation of rounds. Observation 2. Environmental stakes lead to the development of new transport modes combining vehicles powered by conventional and green energies. This raises new problems for the operator. Observation 3. RFT company social issues impose consideration of constraints relating to operator, driver and planner health and safety. Observation 4. Currently available transport management software solutions are ill-suited to the problems of SMEs and do not take into account the combined financial, environmental and health-safety dimensions. In the light of these four observations, the Smart Planning project aims to remove scientific and technological barriers to implementing robust planning support systems for sustainable transport systems. The term sustainable transport systems has been taken to mean those that take into account financial, environmental and social issues in relation to both driver and planner health and safety. Breaking the project down into five main tasks enables us to develop a new knowledge combination in relation to implementing compromises for RFT planning purposes. The difficulty in adopting compromises resides in integrating social, financial, environmental and safety concerns into optimised usage of resources. These contributions are validated by field trials conducted mainly at two industrial partners. The aspirations of this project emerge from an interdisciplinary problem requiring mobilisation of skills acquired in, and players from, engineering sciences, ergonomics and the industrial field. We have formed a balanced consortium mobilising five partners from the academic environment, the institutional sector specialised in health matters, and the transport and industrial sectors. Project governance is complemented by two unfinanced partners, who are experts in the fields of occupational health and safety and planning.