Analysis and proposals to ensure collaboration in logistics between aragonese food companies

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Funding body: Association of Food companies in Aragon
Type of funding: Private
Main Researcher: Mª Jesús Sáenz Gil de Gómez (ZLC)
Other Researchers: Alejandra Cuevas Guiral (ZLC)
Start date: 01/10/2012
End date: 15/07/2013
Duration: 9,5 months

Seminar “Horizontal Collaboration in the Food sector: an opportunity for competitiveness in Aragón”
Apr 17, 2013 
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Project Description

Food industry in Aragon is the second largest industry in our region, marked in 2011 by more than 8% of GDP of Aragon with a turnover of more than € 2,700 million and direct employment generated close to 12,000 employees. Its exports totalled € 645 million, almost 25% of its turnover, generating a trade surplus wich has been increasing in recent years and in 2011 reached € 400 million. According to some analyzes it uses between 60 and 70% of agricultural raw materials produced in Aragon.

One aspect in which the food industry has a margin for improvement is logistics and distribution logistics of products made at the point of sale. The Food Industry Association of Aragon is promoting the project ANALYSIS AND PROPOSALS FOR COLLABORATION IN LOGISTICS BETWEEN ARAGONESE FOOD COMPANIES, which aims to identify opportunities for improving this collaboration, in terms of degree of savings for the particular activity logistics companies perform.

The scope of this project is to get a road map of how to set inter-organizational collaborative actions among companies in the Aragonese food Industry sector with technical and economic viability. The objectives of this visibility study are to identify opportunities for improvement in the logistics process of food product distribution, from the point of view of the goods flow, as well as the related information flows, fostering collaboration between companies. Then these improvements can be implemented into logistic flows, future areas of collaborative innovation can be identified and action mechanisms proposed.

Different work packages have been designed to achieve the above goals:

  1. Study of the distribution activity. A field study that allows analysis of the location of the main customers, the most common routes of distribution, most frequent transport modes used, frequency of delivery, logistic and information flows, intermediaries used, as well as to conducting a survey from a given sample of companies in the study population on their experiences and possible opportunities in the sector.
  2. Roadmap. Study on how to develop a collaborative network in logistics between food companies and how this could be extrapolated to other companies with similar needs.
  3. Collaborative Innovation Workshop on Food Supply Chain. With the main objective of carrying out a joint reflection of the various factors in the distribution of food products to determine the synergies of integration in different logistic flows.
  4. Pilot study on the emulation of implementation of the practices proposed in the study in a small group of companies, in order to verify the implementation of this initiative and provide a basis for future extrapolation of results to other possible groups of companies with similar needs.
  5. Preparation of a final report containing the main findings of the study, available for companies participating.

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