Evaluation of Distribution Environment in LTL Shipment Between Central Europe and South Africa

Due to the global expansion of transportation and handling companies, the distribution and supply chains of both raw materials and finished products now requires a better understanding of the shipping environment. This international shipping and handling information describing the physical and climatic conditions provides packaging engineers the required technical information to design better packaging to provide protection to products in various segments of the supply chain. In these global supply chains, products emerging from Central Europe also play an increasingly important role today. From this region, the truck and vessel combination is the most dominant transportation mode for non-time sensitive shipments between continents, mainly for shipments not exceeding the volume of a full container or truckload. Most previous studies mainly focused on regional or domestic measurement, using a single shipment mode that was dependent on the dynamics of a single transport vehicle. This study however focuses on measuring the transportation environment effects (vibration levels, shocks, changes of temperature and relative humidity) in a less-than-truckload shipment using multiple modes of transport in trucks and vessels between two companies and continents, originating from Hungary and ending in South Africa over several weeks. This study aims to provide results for this distribution environment while traveling from the northern hemisphere in Eastern Europe to the southern hemisphere in South Africa