Collaborative Logistics
Creating collaboration between competing businesses through a trusted third party.
The problem
Eleven factories from different companies were competing in the same market. Their orders could not simply be shared or consolidated directly because the companies were competitors, which contributed to fragmented deliveries, inefficient routes and situations where delivery costs became difficult to sustain commercially.
The reality
The opportunity was not simply to add more transport capacity. The carrier could act as an independent third party, bound to keep each client’s information confidential. That made it possible to combine compatible demand without exposing commercially sensitive information between competing factories.
The approach
The carrier collected orders from each factory independently and consolidated them through a shared warehouse operation. By keeping each customer’s information separate while combining compatible shipments, it could build larger loads and optimise delivery routes. Daniel started with route planning and operational execution, then progressed into leading the operational team, coordinating with factory logistics teams and managing the day-to-day operation.
The result
The operating model was refined until the carrier could run the operation independently, with clearer processes, systems and responsibilities. The model created a way for competing businesses to benefit from consolidation without needing to share information with one another.
What I learned
The key lesson was that collaboration does not always require competitors to collaborate directly. Sometimes the right operating model — and a trusted third party — can remove the constraint.