The Physical Internet (PI) is a relatively young and compelling vision about the freight transport and logistics system of the future. Besides showing how many technological and organizational innovations could converge in a real-world logistics system, it also addresses cross-industry interests such as digitalization, standardization, resilience, and environmental sustainability. In the logistics R&D community, the PI is already inspiring new designs of loading and packaging material, architectures for collaboration, and open information exchange, as well as algorithms for system-wide optimization. Our focus is on the position and role of maritime ports within the PI, as the transport hubs that facilitate most of the world's international trade. We introduce the key notions of the PI vision and expand on the unique position of maritime ports in the PI with the respective challenges this may create. Finally, we discuss the requirements for maritime ports to be ready to take up their role in the PI. We found that policy directions for ports to contribute to the development and implementation of the PI lie within the areas of transport infrastructure, (PI) standardization, advanced terminal areas, ICT hardware, information systems (IS) and platforms, and sustainability management. @en

The Physical Internet (PI) is a paradigm-changing and technology-driven vision, which is expected to significantly impact the development of the freight transport and logistics (FTL) system of today. However, the development of the FTL system towards the PI creates much uncertainty for its current stakeholders. Ports are one of those stakeholders that are expected to be profoundly affected by these developments. However, research that focuses on port policy, under the uncertain developments towards the PI, is still lacking. By providing port authorities with insights and recommendations on robust policy areas, we address this void in literature. We conduct a scenario analysis in combination with multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to determine the importance of port performance indicators and policy areas in different scenarios. The most significant, uncertain, and orthogonal factors for the development of the PI are technological development and institutional development. We find that for a proper alignment with the PI vision, in three out of four scenarios, ports should prioritize the implementation of digital solutions and standards, as opposed to an infrastructure focused policy.@en

The Physical Internet (PI) is a novel, comprehensive and long-term vision of the future global freight transport and logistics (FTL) system, which is aimed at radically improving its efficiency and sustainability. As research on the PI concept is still young, the functioning of maritime ports in the context of the PI is still underexplored. Our aim is to contribute to the scientific debate about radically different futures for maritime ports around the world, by identifying their possible future development paths towards the PI. We construct an evolutionary port development framework that identifies the main dimensions of the PI in relation to ports, including governance, operational, and digital aspects. To design the future development paths towards the PI, we conducted a scenario analysis and used a Delphi survey amongst port development and PI experts. The resulting expectation is that a fully globally functioning of the PI may not be reached by 2040. Also, our analysis shows that global governance of FTL systems is critical for the pace of development and adoption. Building on the identified potential future development paths, we provide a discussion, relevant for port authorities and other stakeholders, as well as avenues for future research.@en

Maritime ports are an integral part of global trade and the supply network system. An upcoming paradigm for innovation in this system is that of the Physical Internet (PI). This highly advanced way of shipping will present a very different logistics environment with respective challenges for maritime ports. For those investing in or operating port systems, it is important to understand whether different service quality aspects will be important in this future system, compared to today. Our paper deals with the port performance evaluation and selection problem. Although it has been studied extensively in a contemporary context, there has been no exploration of the criteria and preferences of decision-makers in the future shipping environment of the PI. Our objective is to define these criteria and explore their weighting in this new context. We propose two distinct autonomous decision-makers for port performance evaluation and selection in the PI: intelligent containers and vessels. We identify future port performance evaluation and selection criteria, and analyse their weighting based on an expert survey, complementing the extant literature on port performance evaluation and selection and the PI. We use the Bayesian Best-Worst Method (BWM) to derive weights for the criteria. We find that, compared to the current port performance evaluation and selection literature, in a first stage in the modelling of intelligent agents’ performance preferences, subtle differences in weights mark the step from the present towards the PI. Partly, this is reassuring for port authorities as they can manage largely the same set of performance indicators to be attractive for both decision-makers. However, the results also show differences between agents, with an increased importance of, in particular, Level of Service, Network Interconnectivity, and Information Systems.@en

The Physical Internet (PI), a new vision for the future of the global freight transport and logistics system, describes a geographical hierarchy of interconnected networks of networks, from the urban, to the national, the continental, and the global level. Like today, in PI the maritime ports will fulfil roles as continental and global hubs. Differently than ports today, however, decisions to split and bundle cargo across ships and other modes will not be made solely on the basis of long-term agreements by ports, but rather ever more dynamically and in real-time, aiming to reconsolidate shipments within the port area. This implies a need to reconsider the currently used information systems (ISs), and to gain understanding of future requirements to satisfy their needs. We exploit a design science research (DSR) approach to shape these requirements. Among the many components of future ISs, we study ports’ track-and-trace (T&T) capability. The proposed information architecture (IA) enables to integrate T&T capability in PI ports by means of information carried on PI containers into the logistics chain via an open interface platform, which also supports interoperability among the various actors’ ISs. The design is based on the Reference Architecture Model for Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). This model supports the analysis of PI ports in key dimensions along with hierarchical logistics entities, which could be used as a blueprint for IAs of PI ports, globally. We provide insights into the approach's applicability by means of the illustrative case of Teesport, located in Northeast England (United Kingdom).@en

Freight transport and logistics (FTL) produce around 15% of the world’s GDP and account for approximately 10% of finished product costs on average. However, through its contribution to the carbon footprint and traffic congestion, today’s FTL operations are often considered to be non-sustainable from an economic, environmental, and societal perspective. Transportation marks its presence with over 30% of the global carbon emissions. Additionally, as demonstrated by regular disruptions and the resulting shock-effects on international trade and manufacturing, the global FTL system suffers from vulnerabilities and lack of resilience. In addition to being critical components in the FTL system, maritime ports function as facilitators of international trade, through which they contribute to the economic development of countries and regions. Over centuries, maritime ports have evolved from simple gateways between land and sea into highly complex systems with a large and diverse number of stakeholders being involved, and various types of services being offered. This has caused maritime ports not only to function as (transshipment) hubs in FTL networks, but also a location where industrial and value-added services take place. In this way, ports can be considered as dynamic organic systems within both national socio-economic-political and globalized economic systems, where ports need to continuously adapt to their external environment by changing economic and trading patterns, new technologies, legislation, and port governance systems. An innovation that is expected to impact the current economic and trading patterns, technologies, legislation, and governance systems, is the Physical Internet (PI). The PI is an all-encompassing vision for a future FTL system that transforms “the way physical objects are moved, stored, realized, supplied and used across the world”, aiming towards greater economic, environmental, and societal efficiency and sustainability. By analogy with the digital internet (DI), physical shipments are encapsulated into multi-level modular containers and sent through an open hyperconnected network of logistics networks to their final destinations. The PI is defined as “a hyperconnected global logistics system enabling seamless open asset sharing and flow consolidation through standardized encapsulation, modularization, protocols and interfaces to improve the efficiency and sustainability of serving humanity’s demand for physical objects”...@en