» Home        The changing role of gateways in the context of global value chain dynamics Prof. Werner Delfmann, University of Cologne, Germany Abstract Intermodal transportation services and multimodal transportation infrastructure will play central roles in the logistics systems of corporations competing in global markets in the 21st century. Several trends are fundamentally changing multinational value chains: continued economic globalization as the driving force in trade and investment, the growing demand for time definite product delivery, the adoption of flexible and customer oriented manufacturing and business practices, the ongoing trend of outsourcing, and - above all and as a consequence of all this - the need for an integrated management of the resulting global value chains and complex logistics networks. These value chains depend on intermodal transportation services to meet customers’ demands for a system of interconnected logistics networks, involving combinations of transport modes, in which all the component logistics flows are seamlessly linked and efficiently coordinated. It has to offer manufacturers a full range of transportation modes and routing options, allowing them to coordinate supply, production, storage, finance, and distribution functions to achieve efficient relationships. These trends are also driving the demand for new types of multimodal transportation infrastructure being an integral part of integrated value chain management. Requiring coordinated, continuous, flexible, and reliable transportation and transhipment, but more and more also a wide range of value added services, this is generating demand for new roles of sea- and airports as well as new types of “landports” that integrate transportation and logistics services in order to facilitate integrated value chains. In this light ports and gateways have to meet much more differentiated requirements than mere transshipment points. Logistical flows between these nodes show a wide range of logistical diversity. Depending on the functional role the ports have to play in logistics systems the infrastructural and procedural requirements may differ significantly. Key influence factors determining these different requirements are the structural types of logistics networks, the procedural types of goods flows, their time characteristics, the different transport modes and the degree of integration of the ports in the overall value networks. The paper will discuss the impacts of such an integrated value chain and logistics network perspective on the future role of ports in general and of global gateways in special and will show the need to come to a much more differentiated understanding as traditionally. « Back to Abstracts  ©2007 Center for Transportation Studies, UBC. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy