Assistance in the transit of grain and other food products through the territory provided to Ukraine by the countries of Eastern Europe has stalled. Instead of facilitating transportation, there are now a number of prohibitions or restrictions. Indeed, due to problems with logistics, products accumulated in assisting countries, overstocking markets and reducing local prices.. But there is a solution that will change the logistics and ensure that Ukrainian wheat does not remain in the EU..
Not everyone knows this, but the only donor of foreign exchange earnings that Ukraine can use to finance armed resistance to Russian aggression is precisely exports.. Under conditions of war, the country's viability largely depends on the efficiency of cargo turnover along the main economic artery - the railway.. And it is very unfortunate that the sphere of railway freight logistics still functions according to the principles of taxi services of the last century..
Human factor.
Like many years ago, in the 1990s, the human factor is crucial in end-to-end railway business processes. Then there were no mobile phones, Internet coverage, automated traffic control systems. Forwarders were the engines of business processes - smart people in cars who rushed between railway stations, veterinary, quarantine and grain inspections, carried certificates, papers, grain samples.
Their function was to organize all stages of the movement of cargo from one interested party to another: to get railway cars and resolve the issue, motivating everyone involved in the process with money, starting from the commodity cashier or loading master. The role and weight in the forwarding business was measured by the ability to receive wagons, and the measure of steepness was measured by the rank of the official with the help of which this was achieved..
After the Revolution of Dignity, point changes began: the abolition of certification, the appearance of electronic waybills, the introduction of a wagon market, when privately owned wagons appeared next to the wagons of the state company Ukrzaliznytsia. But all these changes were superimposed on the outdated process mechanics, so they could not lead either to a new format of relationships or to transparency and predictability of logistics..
The technological and organizational lagging behind of railway logistics from the needs of the time was clearly demonstrated by regular crises in the market for the transportation of agricultural goods, when every spring carriers faced a shortage of goods for their transport and were forced to dump, and agricultural producers each autumn had to overpay for the opportunity to take out the crop. Because it is impossible to solve the problem of exporting 50 million tons of grain using the same technologies, principles and methods that used to solve the problem of exporting 5 million tons.
The existing technology does not meet the real need of the agricultural producer. And this is not the purchase or “procurement” of wagons, but the opportunity, even at the stage of concluding an export contract, to plan as clearly as possible in terms of time and cost all stages of its implementation: storage, loading, transportation and delivery of cargo to the buyer in accordance with the contractual terms.
Ukrainian cargo owners and traders do not have the opportunity to acquire the responsibility of the participants in the transportation process for the processing and delivery of cargo at a specific time, to a specific location. They are forced to plan the sale of grain for export almost blindly, having no information about the carrying capacity of the railways and not knowing whether it will be physically possible to take their goods to world markets..
The unsatisfied demand for certainty and accountability in rail logistics has greatly exacerbated the impact of the economic shocks experienced by Ukraine due to Russian aggression, blocking ports and changing the usual routes of Ukrainian cargo to world markets.. During 2022, agricultural producers overpaid UAH 6 billion for internal rail logistics of grain and spent about UAH 30 billion on the purchase of excess transport.
And carriers, having received income in the year of the war, as in the previous six years taken together, this year will have significantly less agricultural cargo. The state carrier Ukrzaliznytsya, 38% of the cargo base of which in 2022 was grain, may suffer the most. And the main consequence is that forward markets with attractive prices that require manageable and predictable logistics are not available to Ukrainian exporters..
New logistics.
The cost of transport and forwarding services in Ukraine is formed by two-thirds of funds that do not take a direct part in production, but are intended “for people” selling certainty and exceptions to the rules. In Europe, too, not much better, as it turned out.. There is also irresponsibility in which it is comfortable for an official to work - when you are not officially responsible for anything, but you can say to a friend, relative, good person: “We will do it”.
The solution to this problem is to eliminate the influence of the human factor by introducing mathematical processes into logistics.
For several years, together with a team of scientists and IT specialists, I have been working on the creation of just such a technology.. Logistics operates with exact indicators (distances, times, weights), there is nothing there that could be interpreted ambiguously. 70 tons is 70 tons. It is the space of inaccuracy, uncertainty and ambiguity formed by obsolete transportation rules that becomes a breeding ground for corruption, where the factor of competitive advantage will be the purchase of exceptions to the rules, the purchase of certainty.. If we remove uncertainty and ambiguity, then all logistics is a sequence of precise actions and events.. Even if there are two outputs and solutions for one event, it is still a mathematical “yes” or “no” that can be transferred to artificial intelligence.
It is necessary to create blocks of the information environment in which enterprises related to grain logistics can already interact. An incredible number of owners of elevators, transport, grain producers can join this voluntary self-governing network.. The main difference between the technology is that enterprises interact not at the level of managers, but at the level of automated systems of these enterprises and organizations. This will reduce the influence of officials, reduce costs, carry out a digital transformation of the logistics of Ukraine and neighboring European countries, with which we are now deepening economic relations.
End-to-End Interaction.
Confirmation of the coincidence of this vision with the vision of European colleagues was the development of an open data exchange system in the field of freight traffic announced on March 23 in Budapest at a meeting of the Regional Board of the International Union of Railways (UIC).. The only difference is that while European like-minded people are still at the stage of attracting development funding from the European CEF fund and from private investors, the Ukrainian team can already offer a technological base for launching a pilot project in this direction.
The weight of Ukraine as a global guarantor of food security has led to investments by neighboring countries in improving the capabilities of export corridors. As part of the Paths of Solidarity initiative, the European Commission announced the allocation of 1 billion euros to solve the problem of bottlenecks in Ukraine-EU transport links. The key to the success of this investment is as follows: the construction of infrastructure projects will be preceded by the launch of information infrastructure and technology for end-to-end interaction of all participants in the supply chain. After all, this will allow you to immediately see all the really available transportation resources, the bottlenecks of the "
War becomes a catalyst for change that determines the future of Europe and the world. Ukraine, already known to the world as a digital state, has a chance to become a “game changer” in the digital transformation of logistics, which is inevitable and will lead humanity to a new model of economic interaction and cooperation.