The Institute for Transport and Logistics Foundation, together with seven European partners belonging to the Central Europe territories, have launched an initiative to establish a European ICT network to optimize and improve the transnational logistic flows of manufacturing companies within the project KASSETTS. This project is implemented through the CENTRAL EUROPE Programme co-financed by the ERDF and started in October 2008.

Transport, logistics and related ICT services play a fundamental role for SMEs as they represent the strategic leverages on the Central Europe markets.This kind of services should be integrated in procurement and distribution chains. Nevertheless SMEs EU logistics management is far from being optimal and SMEs can hardly access optimized transnational transport solutions because of:

KASSETTS wants to solve these problems by creating a stable EU operative ICT network of logistics brokers, based on open source policy, in which every broker is a joint logistic office among SMEs that: daily collects manufacturing SMEs transport orders with interfaces to their IT systems; aggregates (critical mass) and optimizes SMEs demand in terms of vehicles routes and transport means use at regional and transnational level in dynamic combination with other similar brokers; plans optimal logistics transnational chains on the base of destinations/quantity/timing of shipping of different local groups of manufacturing SMEs; interfaces this optimized demand to logistics operators (road and intermodal). The broker is neither a new logistic operator nor a 4PL, but improves supply-demand relations of the companies involved, fosters logistics outsource & helps operators in having an organized demand.

Using such a logistics solutions can provide benefits in terms of savings and help companies to reduce traffic’s negative effects on the environment. These benefits were proved by using this methodology with great initial success. According to ITL -  the Institute for Transport and Logistics Foundation -  (www.fondazioneitl.org) from Italy: “Preliminary results from our studies and researches at local level show cost saving over 20% by user SMEs, 30% less kilometers run by vehicles and number of transport routes reduced by 37%”.

The project relies on a multidisciplinary partnership with public institutions in Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic. As the KASSETTS regions strongly base their future development on SMEs systems & on their transnational trade relations, future expectations concern also the possibility of influence regional policies aiming to optimize transport and logistics activities, SMEs local systems competitiveness, environment sustainability and the preservation of the territories.

Since the 31st of march 2009, TEC is no longer a project partner in KASSETTS. However, it plays the role of an associated institution in the project. The responsible partner for Slovenia is the Regional Development Agency Mura.