A business and ICT architecture for a logistics city

doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2009.05.021

International Journal of Production Economics

Volume 122, Issue 1, November 2009, Pages 216-228

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2009.05.021 Get rights and content

Abstract

The city of Melbourne, Australia, stands to benefit from achieving the logistics city status. The planning theme of a logistics city is designed around achieving efficiencies and long term sustainability out of the legacy of dispersed groups of intensive “logistics activity areas”. This is not to re-invent solutions particularly in Melbourne, where the existence of a legacy logistics infrastructure and ad hoc growth has resulted in the business architecture that is constantly in the “catch-up” mode. This is seen as a unique opportunity for developing business models to meet the future challenges of the growth of trade, freight movement and maintaining economic, environmental and urban sustainability. Enterprise architecture will enable attention to be focused on the development of a collaborative business model, which will help to achieve efficiencies in view of the complex set of economic, social and environmental parameters. The logistics city business architecture responds to the shift to a services economy, which is generating different patterns of workforce travel to ensure good access to skilled workers, to other services, to business clients and to national and international markets.

Introduction

A number of cities around the world aim to improve their international standing, competitiveness and attractiveness as logistics hubs. The Institute for Logistics and Supply Chain Management (ILSCM) believes that the ultimate progression for a logistics intensive urban economy is the multi-faceted development into a logistics city. Several of these exist and whilst they are not always refereed to as such, these logistics cities such as Dubai, Shanghai, Singapore and those in the USA are multi-faceted in terms of their characteristics. They achieve significant economic growth potential, as well as possess an ability to attract investments and projects from leading international and local logistics companies, thus securing further strength in their supply chain management capability. Within these logistics cities, industrial parks comprise dedicated infrastructure, strategically located within a free trade zone. This leverages the excellent connectivity and superior handling efficiency of a local airport or sea port that enables quick turnaround, value-added logistics and regional distribution activities.

There are other developments of logistics intensive activity within logistics cities, such as inland ports, intermodal hubs and deconsolidation centres. These areas have also been referred to as freight villages. The focus of attention is underpinned by the significant economic contribution to particular regions. Common characteristics may be identified, such as quality road and rail infrastructure, depth and strength of the regional distribution industry, skill of the workforce and sustainability (urban, economic and environment). There are also the benefits derived from close proximity to a central business district (CBD) with its range of financial and business services. Other features are healthcare, education and tourism.

One of the major enablers of these logistics cities is world class infrastructure, which includes information and communications technology (ICT). Globalisation and internationalisation of supply chains has placed significant emphasis on electronic data interchange (EDI) through systems such as CargoWise EDI, TradeGate, TradeXchange, and TradeNet. These facilitate trade administration, such as processing of trade and customs declarations, enabling seamless trade transactions with the critical involvement of customs services.

In addition to the global network of trading nodes and logistics cities, the ICT infrastructure also supports the nodal elements or intensive logistics activity centres within cities. This paper relates to the development of business and ICT architecture viewpoints as an approach to manage the complexities for the growth of the ICT infrastructure for a comprehensively planned logistics city in Melbourne, Australia.

This approach was proposed because of the particular nature of the logistics resources in Melbourne, where the concentration of logistics assets in the Western region provide a particular challenging scenario in terms of achieving optimisations and sustainable economic growth, such as that achieved by other logistics cities.

This paper introduces the enterprise architecture (EA) which will be used to achieve the information integration required for a logistics city that is comprehensively planned. The EA has been developed to enable focus on the business processes and information with transparency.

Section snippets

Literature survey

Enterprise modelling architectures and their accompanying modelling methodologies and languages have powerful applications for clarifying and exposing the behaviour of an enterprise. They support the collection and storage of the information which comprises an enterprise model, and enable the characteristics of the enterprise to be examined in detail, and in various different ways. Architectures are commonly used to investigate the feasibility of achieving business objectives, since they enable

The context for an integrated logistics city

Looking to the other world examples, Melbourne, Australia, stands to benefit from achieving the logistics city status, with the accompanying value proposition of economic, urban and environmental sustainability. The situation is unique because the legacy of ad hoc growth of the logistics services sector and the increasing freight task has contributed to traffic congestion in Melbourne. The strategic location of inland ports will address a number of issues, particularly where the hosting of a

Logistics city information ecosystem

The EA is focused on the development of a business and technical architecture that allows a “logistics information ecosystem” to be defined, that will facilitate the desired economic development. Particular to Melbourne, this term has been introduced to involve the state government, research and private sector in the process for collaborative ways to promote more efficient use of logistics resources already concentrated in the Western region and increase the capacity for trade, employment and

Logistics city enterprise architecture

The EA is a blueprint for a business and information network, including a comprehensive catalogue of business strategy, business processes, technical inventories, system and interface diagrams, and network design (Fig. 4). The EA allows traceability from business strategy to the underlying technology. It is the foundation blueprint for an information system that addresses information integration of government agencies and logistics services companies at the interface level, i.e. not involving

Discussions and conclusions

At this juncture, the development of the logistics city concept for Melbourne has been focused on the business architecture and therefore the focus on the EA has been less on the technology and systems management views. In terms of managing the infrastructure and service management including systems management, network management and system administration form later stages of the design process. The purpose of the logistics city EA focuses attention on the business architecture, enabling the

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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