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), 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).

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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

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.

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