The impact of emerging and disruptive technologies on freight transportation in the digital era: current state and future trends

Abstract

PurposeWith various challenges in the digital era, stakeholders are expressing growing interests in understanding the impact of emerging and disruptive technologies on freight transportation. This paper provides a systematic literature review of the current state of affairs as well as future trends and aims to support stakeholders' decision-making in logistics management in the era of disruptive technologies.Design/methodology/approachSeveral recent and representative articles from academic, industrial and governmental perspectives were investigated to set the scene for this research and to serve as a baseline for electing nine emerging technologies, which were then used to conduct a systematic literature review covering the literature within the area during the past twelve years.Findings3D printing, artificial intelligence, automated robots, autonomous vehicles, big data analytics, blockchain, drones, electric vehicles and the Internet of Things were identified as the emerging technologies. The current state of existing research and potential future opportunities were analyzed.Research limitations/implicationsSince the potential literature body is almost impossible to fully cover, a tradeoff between the number of emerging technologies and the related literature reviewed has been performed. However, the paper provides a novel approach to select the emerging and disruptive technologies and a systematic literature review to fill the identified research gap in the related literature.Practical implicationsThe research support various stakeholders to better capture the current status of and the future opportunities in freight transportation and gain a clearer understanding of the disruptive technologies as well as to guide them in how to deploy these initiatives in future decision-making.Originality/valueBy providing a systematic literature review on the trends, themes and research opportunities in the era of disruptive technologies, the papers bring about broad and comprehensive review on the impact of disruptive technologies on logistics and transportation as well as opportunities to support management decision support in the logistics industry.

Intelligent Vehicle Scheduling and Routing for a Chain of Retail Stores: A Case Study of Dhaka, Bangladesh

“…One such example is the development of an Android application for automatic capturing and image processing using mobile devices' integrated camera systems for the detection of stolen cars, management of parking systems, and verification of license plates [33]. Very recently, nine disruptive technologies such as additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence (AI), automated robots, autonomous vehicles, big data analytics, blockchain, drones, electric vehicles (EV), and the internet of things (IoT) were identified as the emerging disruptive technologies expected to affect logistics and transportation [34]. Intelligent cloud-based technology is making a significant impact on the logistics sector, as cloud computing is used for autonomous logistics to synchronize the real time flow of material and information [35].…”

Illustrating scholar–practitioner collaboration for data-driven decision-making in the optimization of logistics facility location and implications for increasing the adoption of AR and VR practices

“…The existing literature reveals that the IoT benefits the logistics industry by solving several of the latter's inherent problems. Dong and Stefansson (2020), for example, divided the usage of IoT into traffic flow control and cargo track. In traffic flow control, the IoT was used to enable stakeholders to collect real-time traffic information from vehicles with RFIDs, predict accumulated traffic flows and avoid accidents (Eze et al, 2016;Dong and Stefansson, 2020).…”

“…Dong and Stefansson (2020), for example, divided the usage of IoT into traffic flow control and cargo track. In traffic flow control, the IoT was used to enable stakeholders to collect real-time traffic information from vehicles with RFIDs, predict accumulated traffic flows and avoid accidents (Eze et al, 2016;Dong and Stefansson, 2020). It can also be applied to track cargo and to monitor the status of perishables, such as food, chemical, medicine or crude oil and controlling valuable goods to avoid loss, damage or theft (Dong and Stefansson, 2020).…”

“…They can be easily accommodated to the physical movements of objects, but enterprises face cost barriers in their commercial use. Since logistics is a low-margin industry, it can be surmised that the IoT has not fulfilled its potential regarding low-cost goods movements (Dong and Stefansson, 2020). Therefore, some issuessuch as applicable scenarios, existing challenges and future directionsmust be considered when using the IoT and smart logistics (Dong and Stefansson, 2020).…”

“…Since logistics is a low-margin industry, it can be surmised that the IoT has not fulfilled its potential regarding low-cost goods movements (Dong and Stefansson, 2020). Therefore, some issuessuch as applicable scenarios, existing challenges and future directionsmust be considered when using the IoT and smart logistics (Dong and Stefansson, 2020). The complex relationship described in this subsection of the paper, between the IoT and the big data generated can be explored with the help of various mathematical analysis technologies (Song et al, 2021).…”