Eric Louette

• Mr Eric Louette, advisor on freight and logistics is a project co-ordinator on goods transportation and logistics at the Intelligent Transport Task Force within the French Department of Transport – Ministry for an Ecological and Solidary Transition.

  One of the projects he is working on today is to develop systems for interoperable and multimodal telematics systems applied on freight and fleet management, but also on other fields of French and European issues : traceability; tracking&tracing satellite systems; enforcement; security and safety; embedded tools for trucks; digitized and standardised transport facilitations : e-documents and procedures. Moreover, he is involved in UE programs : e-Freight, tracking&tracing of vehicles and freight (CORE, AEOLIX), urban deliveries of goods, Digital Transport&Logistics Forum.

  In the scope of international exchanges, he did currently a lot of presentations in the frame of annual international and European ITS world congresses from 2003 (Madrid) until to 2016 (Melbourne) and from Budapest (2004) until to Strasbourg (2016), participate in seminars for a digitized international supply chain (Quito, Taïpei, Kuala-Lumpur, Honk-Kong, Kyoto, Shenzen) and forums for the deployment of ICT in transport and logistics sectors (Lille, Batna – Algeria, Sousse – Tunisia, Ryad – Saudi Arabia, …).

  Previous relevant experience:

  • EVI (Electronic Vehicle Identification) – ERTICO  – tags to identify vehicles;
  • GEOFENCE-MD (Great Lyon, Renault Trucks) for urban hazardous goods deliveries and TEMPO-ARTS (Advanced Road Traffic in South West) euro-régional programme for Tracking and tracing Dangerous Goods (DG) and living animals;
  • MITRA (STREP of EC for the DG risk management), MADAMA (Risk Management Systems for Dangerous Goods Transport in Mediterranean Area  – 2006-2007), SCUTUM (GNSS tracking&tracing system in Italy, Austria and France – 2011), in cooperation with the Centre d’Etudes Techniques du Sud Ouest (CETE S-O);
  • Advisor in the Telematics workshop of UNECE Joint meeting for DG regulation and the UNCEFACT;
  • PREDIT WP04  (freight and logistics), Poles of competitiveness and clusters  : expertises of proposals to improve multimodal, efficient and CO2 friendly transports;
  • Embedded systems in trucks : a ROI study for small and medium hauliers companies (2008);
  • ASEAL (Asia-Europe Alliance) : paperless programme for the supply chain and facilitations of exchanges between all the public and private operators, moreover France-China corridor;
  • E-FREIGHT : European programme for paperless documents (waybill) and next generation single window;
  • CORE (Consistently Optimised REsilient Secure Global Supply-Chains) FP7 project (2014-2018);
  • DTLF (Digital Transport&Logistics Forum) EC/DG-MOVE programme 2015-2018

   

  At the same time, he participates in civil engineering schools (ECE Paris, ENTPE Lyon, CNAM,  Ecole Centrale de Lille, ESC Clermont and Rouen) training programme and teaches TIC and economics for transportation at Paris 12 University, as he did in several universities and research bodies of Western and Central sub-Saharian Africa, from 1980 until to 1993.

  Eric Louette is post gratuated in International Law (Institut du Droit des Affaires – Aix-en-Provence), Management of Projects (Bordeaux 1) and Transport Economics (Lyon 2).

   

  Digital Transport&Logistics Forum : a program for digital transparency and inter-operability

   

   I – An EC initiative

  The Forum is a consultative body bringing together stakeholders in a multimodal environment to achieve a common perspective on digital transport and logistics in the general context of the Digital Single Market and to identify initiatives and concrete recommendations for relevant European policies and legislation. The Forum gathers stakeholders at European and international level and have a duration of three years. In addition to the Plenary, the Forum addresses in the form of working groups (WGs) specific topics, around currently four major challenges of digitalisation identified.

  It is a platform for the coordination and cooperation between stakeholders (operators, logistics service providers, public authorities, cargo owners, technology provider) in a cross-modal and cross-sectorial perspective and provides expertise and user requirements for the further digitalisation of transport and logistics and the possible preparation/implementation of EU legislation.

  1.1 Interoperability of systems and standards (incl. governance structure) – to actively connect all players;

  

  1.2 Acceptance of electronic documents – by all public and private players in the market;

  

  1.3 Intelligent use of electronic data available to create added value for EU business – adjust planning based on real time data; allow private actors to use public data; manage, share, exploit data and new business models and value added services; develop corridor community systems/data platforms;

  

  1.4 Trustworthy environment – cybersecurity, trusted third party and e-Signature.

  Architecture for CORE (FP7 EC) WP16 Tracking&Tracing of dangerous goods transport

  

   

  II – Main Items
  2.1 eDocuments: progress is first needed to enable the use of electronic transport documents: in some countries, individual legislations at national level are a barrier to the use of electronic transport documents. France did access in November 2016 to the eCMR protocol.
  Furthermore, the re-use of information already submitted can enable efficiency gains and cost savings. For example in the case of maritime transport, thanks to an eManifest, a ship upon entering the EU would provide the required information once, the same information being then re-used from port to port as needed;
  2.2 Big data / cloud platforms and new opportunities: A large quantity of data is generated in existing systems (big data, structured and unstructured). There is a high potential and an urgent need for exploiting those data more widely along the logistics chain, in combination with trust-building tools (data protection, cybersecurity, etc), adequate data governance, business models (e.g. when sharing data or assets), transparency and integrity control. This can enable the provision of detailed shipment information to end-consumers, improve processes in real-time or enhance the predictability of transport operations. All these are topics that should be addressed by the Forum;
  2.3 Internet of things: By 2020, up to 50bn devices will be interconnected – not just phones – to a high-speed internet. As an example, better use of digital technologies can enable a port authority to increase capacity without increasing space. Another example would be the real innovation that would be brought by cross-border tracking and tracing. While track and trace is an old tool at national level, it would indeed be innovative for businesses at cross-border level.
  Digital technologies are evolving fast. It is therefore important to think about who is in the “surprising neighbourhood” – which organisations from outside sector(s) may become competitors, as it may happen e.g. in the automotive sector;

  2.4 Single Window: A big challenge in data sharing is found in business to government (B2G) and government to government (G2G) activities: Forum members considered that administrations within governments do not sufficiently share information and lack in delivering efficiently. Governments are called to encourage the use of single windows;

  2.5 Pilot projects on TEN-T corridors: Pilot projects would be needed to show possible benefits of digital transport. TEN-T corridors could be an adequate frame where such pilots could be implemented and coordinated;

  At last, social aspects are taken into consideration cause it needs to be acknowledged that digitalisation also has social effects. Some jobs might become redundant by adopting digital technologies, while others might be created thanks to the development of new value added services. Furthermore, investments in human capital will be needed to assure that the workforce has the necessary competences and skills.

   

  III – Conclusion

   The as-is situation, where, on the one hand, there are standards leading to closed systems due to different implementation, and, on the other hand, platforms and infrastructure are mostly proprietary solutions which are difficult to compare and to expand.

  The objective of an integrated systems approach is to support innovation in interoperability and create an open infrastructure for controlled data sharing amongst logistic service providers and with their customers, meeting authority requirements.

  The integrated systems approach would build upon investments by re-using existing (open or de-facto) standards, re-using available platforms and their functionality and would be technology independent, allowing to incorporate specific solutions such as blockchain. It would meet business needs by allowing for standardized services which increase market potential of suppliers and prevent vendor lock-in.

  A conceptual interoperability approach was introduced for flows of interaction between customers and providers (choreography for transactions) based on minimal data sets. Conceptual interoperability, based on business processes, would allow for controlled data sharing for business requirements between any two stakeholders.

  Generic concept for a  common platform:

  

   

  References

  1 European Commission – DG-Move – Digitised Transport&Logistics Forum – 2016/17

  2 29th Forum UN/CEFACT – UNECE (Geneva) 27-31 March 2017

  3 E. Louette, Presentations  for the SIS at the ITS worldcongress 2016 Melbourne, the UN/CEFACT 29th Forum and the SITL (Paris March 2017)

  4 S. Eckartz, W. J. Hofman, and A. F. v. Veenstra], “A decision model for data sharing”, presented at the Electronic Government (EGOV), Dublin, 2014

  5 B. Klievink, E. Van Stijn, D. Hesketh, H. Aldewereld, S. Overbeek, F. Heijmann, et al., “Enhancing Visibility in International Supply Chains: The Data Pipeline Concept.”, International Journal of Electronic Government Research, vol. 8, pp. 14-33, 2012