VITE: Virtual Transport Enterprise

Integrating the supply chain through intelligent transportation and electronic commerce

The objective of the VITE consortium

• VITE is organised to develop new opportunity for small and medium enterprises to reap the same benefit of the economies of scale as large business does, through creating a system in which independent small and medium enterprises can act together as if they were one large enterprise

• VITE develops solutions including Internet-based information and communication technologies, such as electronic commerce, GIS and GPS systems, integrated planning, scheduling and resource management, designed and integrated using the latest enterprise engineering methods.

• VITE results will be available for partners' exploitation under a Consortium Co-operation Agreement and Intellectual Property Rights Agreement.

• For small and medium sized transport companies this translates to
  • combining transport on demand with long term logistic services business contracts, minimising wasted capacity,
  • providing end-to-end traceability of goods, with predictable cost and delivery times
  • providing value added services, such as 'on the fly storage'
  • options to quote the best competitive price, based on customer demand and available capacity across the transport chain (e.g. quickest, most economical, just in time, etc.)

• Supply chain integration involving SMEs from producer to customer (producer, wholesales, transport and retailer).

  Examples:

  • Manufacturing and transport companies.

The supply chain integration model allows the development of a variety of business models, e.g. commercial alliances of manufacturing supply chain and logistics operators through integration of SMEs

• Primary producers, Wholesalers, Transport companies, Retailers

The supply chain integration model to be developed in VITE allows to optimise for price, delivery time, risk minimisation, in a variety of product domains

• Expected outcome for all participants: through efficiency gains increase the profit margin without increasing prices

• Improve business continuity though longer term planning then usually possible in SMEs

The VITE Consortium will allow its participants to achieve these goals through developing and demonstrating models of the 'Virtual Transport Enterprise' implemented using off the shelf, proven technology modules.

VITE Consortium | Who | How | Debriefing for potential partners