On the sofa with… Ignasi Gomez, Clúster Manager IN-MOVE by Railgroup

Advanced Manufacturing – What are the biggest challenges to achieve truly sustainable mobility in the industrial field? Ignasi Gomez – Well, basically it is to try to change the concept of mobility. That is, we have to associate mobility with a derivative that helps us to make our lives. And that’s what MIT at Harvard is calling it today, which is already defining it as Live Mobility. Mobility is something that has to help us to make our lives much more than what we already do, which is, if we look at it, on the one hand we are going to do culture, we are going to do leisure, we are going to do work, etc. and we have to associate the multimodal mode and sustainable door-to-door mobility to this scenario. If we add sustainable, it turns out that there are certain mobility vectors that are more prone to this sustainability than others if we promote them automatically, thanks to the awareness of sustainability. This is precisely the way to enhance and mainstream the opportunities that sustainable mobility brings. A.M. – What technological innovations are you highlighting to support multimodal logistics? I.G. – Well, I would expand on that a little bit more because multimodal logistics, as in the passenger part, requires a focus on the needs of the customer at the end. And normally and in Europe, and the data shows this, logistics is focused not on the end customer, but a little bit before. Therefore, if we focus purely on the shipper and add the ability to put sustainable logistics in place, we are automatically leveraging the use of technologies. First of all, to understand what is my specific capacity to analyse the demand that I can use to transport it in time almost almost in the end customer’s key, i.e. to the supermarket. If I approach the shipper, I will be able to understand what are the flows of cargoes he needs, even linking from the origin, from the distribution of the elements that they have in their factories or their distributors, to the last mile logistics. And in between I have to put as much of a sustainable logistics chain as possible. That is the key. And I also need to know at all times how my cargo is doing. It’s no longer just about loading screws, it’s about agri-food products that make up the bulk of the multimodal movement. It is what is moving the most along the food chain. And unfortunately, for example, Europe only moves 17% of sustainable multimodal freight, and in Spain only five. Of the 95% in Spain, most of the 80% works by road, I am not saying to go against the road, to go with the road, but not everything has to be done by road, as this also implies knowing the conditions of the load very well. If you are talking about the wine sector, you have to incorporate sensors capable of anticipating vibrations that spoil the load. We have to be able to locate perfectly where my load is. We have to be able to locate perfectly what is the temperature variation of my loads, especially in chill and frozen, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Therefore, the capacity of technology has been imputed directly to the monitoring of the cargo is very large, but we also have to be able to incorporate the start-up in what is the material that moves in materials, functionalities capable of interlocuting with the environment and with the infrastructure. This is called Physical Digital Infrastructure and will allow us, and there are already recent projects, to be able to equip this infrastructure and move from, let’s say, static infrastructure, to SMART infrastructure and logically with a great growth in technological opportunities.

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