Pressure on more sustainable transport and increased congestion provide
opportunities for intermodal transport, but it suffers from unreliable transport times due to a lack of coordination at the operational level. Synchromodal transport can mitigate this effect by taking an integral perspective. It appears that the majority of research to date has focused on the technical and operational challenges of synchromodal transport such as planning and supporting IT systems and platforms.
In this article, a synchromodal maturity model has been applied to 41 cases to gauge the current state of synchromodal transport from a complete perspective. @en

This article shows the results of our study to determine the general level of synchromodal maturity for shippers and logistics service providers operating in The Netherlands and Belgium. A questionnaire was used to assess the maturity of synchromodal transport for 41. This research extends the literature by applying the model to a broader setting. Although 41 companies provide some good insight on the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), generalization cannot be made on the findings. In this study most results were obtained for logistics service providers and shippers. It was observed that shippers in general are more mature in synchromodal transport, except for decision-making power. The higher score for data exchange for shippers seems to suggest that vertical collaboration is strongly supported by data exchange. Our study shows that most companies are more mature in the areas of decision-making power and transport planning. On the other hand, transport execution, pricing and type of relationships are lagging. The lagging of transport execution could be explained by absence of a frequent and dense intermodal transport network. Next to that, collaboration between different parties is critical for successful implementation of synchromodality. Comparing the scores between companies within the Netherlands and Belgium similar patterns can be observed when comparing shippers and logistics service providers. Future research will focus on further benchmarking the maturity levels of synchromodality in Europe. @en

Synchromodaal transport biedt een oplossing om goederen efficiënter en betrouwbaarder te vervoeren, maar blijkt in de praktijk vaak nog lastig te realiseren. Welke uitdagingen zijn er voor bedrijven van intermodaal naar synchromodaal transport over te schakelen?@en

In order to meet emission targets for 2050 in Europe transport needs to be executed more 2 efficiently. A promising way to make transport more efficient is synchromodal transport. When the 3 service provider has more flexibility to arrange transport, the utilization and use of intermodal transport, 4 such as rail, can be increased and emissions per unit transported are reduced. Synchromodal transport 5 requires a large change in way of working for shippers and logistics service providers that may seem 6 insurmountable. In this article a maturity model is developed for synchromodal transport that breaks this 7 large change down into several stages that companies go through when developing synchromodal 8 transport. In a case study, executed for several companies situated in Northwestern Europe the maturity 9 model is applied in practice to identify enablers and inhibitors of synchromodal transport.@en