Predictive Analytics For Transportation Industry

The movement of goods from one point to another is complex - the transportation industry is a blend of the networks, infrastructure, equipment, information technology, and employee’s necessary to transport a large variety of products safely and efficiently throughout the nation and around the world. Although generally considered separate transportation entities, trains, planes, ships and trucks are actually part of an integrated network. One of the defining characteristics of today's transportation industry is intermodal or logistic services, the movement of freight through a coordinated and nearly seamless system that uses multiple modes of transportation. Many products now move worldwide in standardized containers that easily transfer onto truck chassis, rail cars, and ship decks as they move from origin to destination. Also, the paper presents the role and importance of products logistics and services in order to obtain the competitive advantage. After a short presentation of logistics evolution, we will define the logistics concept, respectively integrated logistics. The analysis of the logistics activities is based on the total cost concept and it has as a purpose the efficient and effective management of the physical flows of raw materials, materials and finite products, and of the international flows. The competitive advantage is ensured through the harmonization of the logistics function with the other company functions and through the integration of the logistics chain of all upstream and downstream organizations in order to ensure a high level of consumer service at economical costs under the farm of supply chain management. In the end we present the main tendencies in the logistics evolution in the Romanian firms under the circumstances that their international dimension increases.