What was your original motivation to become a researcher/project manager?
My researcher history at PTV dates back to more than 20 years. Research is a fascinating task to cope with the pace and dynamics field of IT development. Innovation includes surprises and is a discovery process. Often, I did not thought about future development and that they can become real. However, they did and you can not be bold enough to find something in IT that can not become real. Therefore, motivation comes every day with new projects and project ideas.
What is your (main) research area today?
Collaboration is a key driver for future business and logistics. Collaboration enables pooling of shipments ensuring scale and cost efficiency of logistics processes also with smaller consignments. The Physical Internet is based on this pillar. A second focus is on decarbonisation of supply chains. Again, collaboration can help to stimulate the usage of more intermodal solutions as well as introduce electric trucks into supply chain processes efficiently. Adapting and integrating PTV tools and solutions into new use cases and logistics contexts is major part of my daily business. Support the development of new features and tools such as the EV-Route planner that PTV is launching on electric trucks.
What is the main focus of your team in ZEFES?
Within ZEFES we were responsible for the user requirements in WP1 providing deep insight into the needs and requirements of various logistics stakeholder groups on the transformation of logistics fleets towards decarbonisation by means of electrifications. PTV will provide dedicated tools on electric truck route and mission planning as well as PTV Developer components as basis for ZEFES Digital Twin tool developments. Furthermore, we are responsible for the 15 ZEFES pilot orchestration in terms of trucks and chargers availability and logistics use case implementation.
From all your activities within the project, what are you the most proud of/keen to share with the public?
We have given the project developments a commercial business driven approach from the beginning. The realisation of the ZEFES pilots will be realised under real world conditions replacing present diesel propelled operations by BEV or FCEV. This makes ZEFES research really challenging but also increases the credibility of the achievements enormously.
How do you expect the ZEFES results will impact your organisation and the transport sector in Europe?
PTV will bring in the PTV EV-Truck Planner product that is the basis for the pilot site development on all 15 ZEFES pilot sites. We can use the tool for estimating energy use of truck under certain mission and include charging stations. We can continuously feed back finds from the logistics planning into the requirements of ZEFES pilots by means of finding charging stations and the impact in the overall logistics performance.
