Single Article - The Association of European Vehicle Logistics

ECG Tech Board’s FVL survey results published

ECG — 2024-03-15

News from ECG

At the end of 2023 the ECG Tech Board ran a survey among ECG members and OEMs to understand the challenges that impact the FVL sector the most. Besides having a dedicated section on digitalisation (current status and plans for investment), it touched upon various business processes as well, including operations, lead time, capacity, technical development of the vehicles, etc. This way the survey painted a bigger picture on the FVL industry than just digitalisation.

Short summary of the survey results:

Both OEMs and LSPs see pressure on capacity & cost – these are the areas with the highest proportion of business-critical challenges.
Lack of storage and transport capacity was stressed as highly impactful by the OEMs and port congestion by the service providers. But the questions on whether investing in digitalisation could solve this challenge did not yield definitive results on either side.
However, the investment level in FVL digitalisation declared by the respondents correlates with the impact of the digital strategies in place, therefore, we can say that companies dedicating resources to digital tools will reap the benefits of this investment.
The lack of transparency was highlighted by both sets of respondents so it is fair to say that communication is key - and not a surprise, therefore, that the data exchange is the best digitised among all the fields. This is followed by fleet and compound management fuelled by the will to control the scarce storage and transport capacities.
In the survey most disruption is seen in road transportation, but this importance might be simply due to the bigger proportion of road transporters who answered the questionnaire.

Read the full report, including a longer executive summary of the results, on the ECG website.

In case you are not familiar with the Tech Board, it was an initiative kicked off last year with invited members representing LSPs, OEMs and IT companies. The purpose of the group lies in the intersection of the below areas:

To identify and resolve the challenges ECG members are facing
To conduct technology monitoring
To facilitate and promote the use of new technologies in the FVL industry
To help tech companies enter the FVL world
To boost collaboration between members, OEMs and tech companies for the adoption of innovative ideas