Company Prelude
Experience from a long series of Norwegian research and development shows that the best way for facilitating scientific and commercial success of projects is to create project consortia that represent:
- A demanding user
- A state-of-the-art research institute
- A company with the strategic intent of commercially exploiting the results of the projects, the “Supplier”.
In many projects in the past, both in the European Union and in Norway, the project partners comprised users, R&D; institutions and consultants. There were few suppliers involved. The role of the “Supplier” in such projects is to ensure that the user-requirements reflect those capabilities that are required to obtain user-friendly, supportable results. After making this observation, and after realising the need and potential for exploiting such results, key actors in the Norwegian maritime logistics development program decided to form a company to play the role of “Supplier” in such projects.
This led to the formation of LogIT in 1998. The owners of LogIT have more than 25 years of experience in shipping, logistics, software- and business development. The initial projects that LogIT undertook, were:
- Themis: EU project developing architectures for Intelligent Transport Systems
- Advances: EU project focussing on quality in maritime operations.
Prior to forming LogIT, the owners were involved in the EU-project Infolog. The goal of Infolog was to demonstrate how the efficiency of inter-modal transport based on waterborne and rail transport could be improved through better information and communication possibilities. Hence Infolog addressed one of the most critical issues for successful multi-modal transport chains. Better means of generating and accessing information is the key to achieving the necessary amount of control and flexibility needed to compete with door-to-door transport by truck.
The Transport Chain Management System (TCMS) was developed within Infolog and is based on specific requirements from shippers, forwarders, carriers and terminal operators/ports. TCMS has a modular structure that makes it generic enough to be used from simple transport supervision to automatic message handling in complex logistics solutions. It can be stepwise adapted to handle more difficult transport chains with an increasing number of players, restrictions and options, thus easily adapting to actual needs and to a growing understanding of the possibilities of using modern information technology.
The Infolog project verified the TCMS concept in various levels of practical demonstrations, focusing on four distinct cases, two in Scandinavia and two in Greece. The feedback from the participating industries about the concept was favourable. This motivated continuous development of a more commercial system supporting the concept.
After completing Infolog, and after starting the new EU-projects, the next undertaking of LogIT was to inspire the establishment of the Norwegian R&D; project ShipLog.
One of the objectives of ShipLog was to develop the commercial version of TCMS. To ensure TCMS business focus and to strengthen the ownership base, the company LogIT Systems was formed in the summer of 2000.