We are the Innovation
Innovation in Transport and Logistics (T&L) can be described at several levels. The most abstract and difficult level to comprehend is the fact that the entire sector itself is an innovation in the Australian economy of the 21st Century.
It is true that societies have been moving goods and passengers around for thousands of years. Notions of transport and logistics have been refined and automated over the centuries. There are still those today who cannot see an emergent industry sector – they continue to see mere refinements to well established systems.
However, the development of digital information flows, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), and the pervasiveness of the Internet within the commercial environment in the last thirty years have allowed industry to manage much more complex intermodal and supply chain operations. Time constraints, geographical barriers and cultural borders have all fallen to the ubiquitous nature of the Web.
It is the creation of a virtual T&L sector based on information and knowledge exchange on a global basis, which has transformed the world of freight and passengers. E-commerce and E-trade via web based systems has opened up the world economy to more productive, efficient and effective operations. It is a quantum leap from the past thousand years of transport constrained by mode and by physical means.
T&L now combines and integrates transport modes – road, rail, air, maritime; as well as aspects of warehousing, distribution and operations management. It is an emerging idea whose time has come. Whether or not it is called supply chain, T&L or any other rubric it is a new form of doing business. It is pervasive, innovative and here to stay.