SL. No.

: To Be Assigned by ISCEA

2018 ISCEA
PTAK PRIZE
TEAM: IUTB-0108-18

Team Member-1 Team Member-2

Name: Mohammad Abarullah Khan Name: Rifat Bin Alam Rohit

Signature: Signature:

Team Member-3 Team Member-4

Name: Khandoker Zishan Name:Sakib Ishraq Utshob

Signature: Signature:

Last Date of Submission: June 08, 2018

Summary:

Showing promise as one of the front runners for being the 5th Asian Tiger, Bangladesh still has a long
way to go before it can ground its position as one of the titan economies of the region. To meet the
government’s hopes of increasing the 6% annual growth rate to 8% by 2020, there’s much work to be
done.

A prominent obstacle standing in the path of ascension is the traffic congestion of the country, affecting
top GDP contributors to small businesses alike, due to the unreasonably high travel times on roads. A
problem, if not dealt with, poses the risk to stagnate economic growth.

Bangladesh, with the basic industrial infrastructure developed, is ripe for a transition to making
industries more efficient, particularly through supply chain optimization. Horizontal collaborations
between companies, especially, presents various opportunities in this field, even possibly mitigating the
traffic impediment.

For this to work, it is imperative that we bypass the hurdles to a healthy coalition between companies,
stringing them to work together as one well connected organism, through customized solutions tailored
to different business collaborations with the help of real-time communication and exchange of data
between suppliers, LSPs and customers.

Challenges:
 Lack of trust between competing companies
Companies unwilling to dedicate enough resources to the collaboration. Leaderships don’t often
support this and are also unwilling to share information

 Lack of beneficial relationships between companies

Companies are often tempted to use collaboration as a way to fill gaps in their own capabilities.
Successful collaborations often build on strengths rather than compensating for weaknesses

 Insufficient knowledge of prospective collaboration

The prospect of a collaboration is to turn win-lose situations into win-win. Companies may be
able to achieve that situation but get skewed benefits which may cause them to shy away from
the collaboration

 Lack of a collaborative platform

There is no platform that initiates a collaborative relationship between companies matching
their needs, so that they can work flawlessly.
  Lack of an IT department in companies
IT departments can monitor real time data and process them to identify the best way to make
use of the collaboration. This makes IT department’s existence imperative for the companies to
flourish

 Increased traffic results in increased lead time

With more trucks in the same vicinity, the roads get clogged and products take longer time to
reach their destination. This adds to their fuel cost and delays

Solution:
In order to initiate a widespread culture of horizontal collaborations between various industries through
different sectors in Bangladesh, there needs to be an initiator that presents to companies prospective
collaborations, but more importantly, a mutually trusted common platform that acts as a mediatory
body in between these businesses, regulating the terms of the coalition amongst these companies as
well as providing the supporting technology and logistical aid to help make such a partnership successful
and convenient.

This is why we propose an on demand cloud based platform for supply chain optimization through B2B
integration. The organization covers a plethora of tasks that works towards one specific goal, to create
and sustain horizontal collaborations between businesses. There are several layers to how we hope to
achieve this:

1) Mediate collaborative relations between businesses that deliver similar products:

Businesses often fail to recognize possible coopetition’s through which their own supply chains
can benefit, often being unaware of possible combinations and thus being unable to create and
nurture a symbiotic solution which both of them can benefit from. This is where we come in and
help them create this. We partner with companies, taking their data and information regarding
their business’ supply chain and how it works, from the locations of their points of interests and
routes which they undertake to help deliver their raw materials and products to the time, date,
quantity and nature of the goods and services they are providing. This helps us identify possible
symbiotic integrations between companies who we later approach to initiate collaborative
discussions.
2) Create a platform for real time information exchange via cloud based computing services:
The data we take from our clients are stored in a private and secure cloud storage facility that is
updated in real time from entries of new developments and changes in the companies supply
chain. Once the companies discuss the terms and conditions of the partnership, we tailor an
online cloud based platform solely for the created coalition that helps involved companies
monitor the stakeholders of the supply chain process in real time.
3) Scout and identify possible mutual optimizations between business’ supply chains:
With the help of the obtained data and using supply chain analysts, AI and machine learning we
can run simulations and test possible alliances in between prospective businesses in terms of
products, delivery times, routes etc. This means that with the more clients we have, we increase
our scopes of optimizing the supply chains more effectively, through exploring more
partnerships and logistical combinations thus ensuring growth of the organization in the future.
How We Do What We Do:
The main ideology behind this platform is providing companies an opportunity to find suitable partners
for initiating and down the line establishing a long-term horizontal collaboration plan, which benefits
companies at both end of the spectrum.

Here is how horizontal collaboration can be effective:

Reduce Logistics Operations Cost:

The top causes of high logistics operations can be traced to low asset utilization, high transportation cost
and rising fuel prices. Given the rate at which fuel prices have risen over the years it has become an
impediment in achieving a fully optimized supply chain. To make matters worse the heavy traffic
experienced during transportation further drives up the cost of the goods transported which has an
effect on the end pricing.

By utilizing horizontal collaboration, companies can consolidate their goods for full truck loads, using a
joint warehouse. From this warehouse, the partnering companies can launch collaborative deliveries to
the same destinations. Thus achieving a higher asset utilization for the individual companies, and with
the number of trucks at a given time on the road reducing due to these types of collaborative
approaches reduces traffic on the road. The end result is a faster, cheaper delivery of goods.

Increase Capacity Utilization:

In most cases, capacity utilization becomes a key indicator for assessing the logistics operational
effectiveness.

A method of capacity utilization can be the use of horizontal collaboration between two shippers who
have overlapping deliveries to the same location. The companies could combine goods shipment
together to increase efficient logistics. They could create a collaboration plan to routinely bundle their
shipments for transport. This would again improve the capacity utilization of the transport and reduce
the number of transport required for each of the companies.
Improve Service Effectiveness:

Different customers have different expectations from logistical services. These demands vary largely
upon the characteristics of their products and orders. In broad terms, these orders classified as:

 Speed Sensitive:

These type of orders, concern over perishable goods (fruits, meats, medical supplies)
etc., which have a very short life spans-tendency to spoil within a short amount of time.
Since these are speed driven deliveries, collaboration on capacity sharing can be a way
for companies to increase shipping speed and frequency of shipping. By doing so
decreases the impact traffic delays have on these deliveries and the reduced number of
delivery transport at a given time also reduces traffic.

 Cost Sensitive:

Products that are non-perishable such as raw materials, frozen and canned foods etc.
don’t require a fast paced delivery method. However, some of these products affected
adversely by the costs of logistics. Thus from a collaboration perspective, these kinds of
shipments can be managed to build a higher level of freight aggregation and exploit the
economies of scale in transport. Moreover, companies can collaborate on changing the
transportation method entirely, by using rail and ocean transport which are generally
cheaper than air or road transport.

This way, not only do we set relations between businesses of the same industry, but setting the metric to
bundling goods of the same sort gives us the avenue to create cross industry relationships thus
increasing our scope.

Collaboration on Front and Back Haul techniques:

Backhaul journeys corresponds to journeys with empty trucks, the costs of which can be substantial if
the transportation distance is long.

Collaboration through a truck sharing approach encourages shippers to consider working proactively to
spot opportunities for sharing empty trucks during front or backhauls.
Freight routes travelling in opposite directions can be aggregated to create an optimized closed loop
shipping corridor.
In these cases partners will fully utilize the trucks during the movement, reducing the overall number of
trucks in use and the number of transportation trips.
Collaboration on a Shared Warehouse:

Collaboration on a shared warehouse provides partners with the opportunity to pay only for the space
they need, with more flexible access to additional space and resources when they have an excess
shipments.
Utilizing shared warehouses, means a single warehouses can cater to multiple companies within a given
vicinity and thus reduce the amount of time it takes for the trucks to load and unload. Moreover, shared
warehouses enables these companies to aggregate their shipments together thus increasing the
efficiency of the entire process for the partnering companies.
What we seek to achieve:

Horizontal collaborations across industries have a multitude of effects across seemingly unrelated
sectors, all of which are beneficial to the industrial ecosystems in Bangladesh that upsurges the
economy to greater heights bolstering the chances of Bangladesh to rise as the latest Asian Tiger. The
effects are such:

1) Increase Market Coverage:

Horizontal collaboration in a decentralized marketplace, would be particularly valuable for
smaller companies who don’t possess the necessary infrastructure to cater to a wider audience.
These companies can find suitable partners through our platform. This enables the companies to
share and leverage their respective strengths and resources so as to improve their overall
capabilities and negotiating power to serve a wider range of more demanding customers.

2) Reduce Traffic and its effect on businesses:

With horizontal collaboration, these companies have the benefit of making shared deliveries
which reduces the number of delivery trucks on the road at a given time. Empty trucks returning
to their factories from their delivery destinations can be used to deliver products of a
collaboration partner, thus effectively utilizing a backhaul journey, and increasing the asset
utilization of both companies simultaneously as well as reducing the number of freight vehicles
on road at any one given point. Also, through cloud optimization and machine learning, we can
allocate routes and times for deliveries so that all deliveries aren’t on the same route at the
same time, rather distributed over different combinations, for the least possible lead time
decreasing both the traffic and its effect on the business.
 3) Reduce CO2 Emissions:
Logistics is one of the sectors that emits the most greenhouse gases. With road transportation
being the most widely used method of moving goods from one place to another in Bangladesh,
for companies it has become the main source of greenhouses emissions. As more and more
companies are becoming proactive in reducing their carbon footprint, enticed by the savings it
incurs over time, horizontal collaboration is a very prospective method of achieving it.
Bangladesh in general is synonymous with traffic gridlocks in highways and city roads. As a result
vehicles often spend a huge amount of time sitting idle in these gridlocks and wasting time and
resources, while generating CO2 emissions.

4) Create a culture of collaboration:

While we start off with small businesses (as they tend to be more susceptible to the idea since
they have the most to gain from it) we expect to grow and incorporate bigger organizations
once they see the positive results it brings, creating a culture for businesses throughout the
country to adopt horizontal collaborations as a means of optimizing their supply chains.

Conclusion
Our primary target is the SMEs because with the model we present, they get access to a wider audience
with more sophisticated but seamless logistical system. Therefore it is imperative for them to work with
us so that they can compete with the ever growing global market. Seeing the SMEs improve, we collect
the data and approach the bigger players in the industry and also pool them into our system to create a
supply chain of global scale.

Horizontal collaboration reduces the number of trucks on the road along with the lead time of each
delivery, thus reducing traffic on that road to an extended amount of time. Our model makes the best
use of this collaboration and increases efficiency of collaborating companies.