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The transportation and handling of dangerous goods require specialized knowledge (including relevant laws and regulations, physical properties, and procedures for responding to incidents) as well as extensive experience. Given the industry’s vulnerability to changes in the logistics environment, such as driver shortages in recent years, ensuring the medium- to long-term stability of dangerous goods transportation in the chemical industry has become an urgent priority. There are limits to what individual companies can do to address these challenges on their own, driving the need for industry-wide initiatives. However, until now, it has not been possible to gain a comprehensive understanding of the actual state of logistics within the industry, making it difficult to identify priority issues and develop concrete measures.

Against this backdrop, this project aimed to visualize the logistics structure of the entire industry on a nationwide scale by encouraging major consignor companies of dangerous goods to collaborate and bring together their respective logistics performance data, leading to the development of effective measures.

The 15 consignor companies participating in the Chemicals WG standardized data items and definitions and then provided one year’s worth of their logistics performance data. Analysis and visualization of this data was commissioned to Professor YANO Yuji of Ryutsu Keizai University (Chairman of the Chemicals WG) and Professor ISHIKAWA Tomoyasu of Fukushima University, allowing the consignors to share the current logistics structure.

In addition, to promote consideration of measures within the industry on an ongoing basis, the data was organized in a format that can be shared even among competing consignors, while ensuring compliance with the Antimonopoly Act.

* The thickness of the arrows indicates the volume of cargo.

Based on the results of this visualization, the Tohoku and Kyushu area, which has low transport density (few fixed-route arrivals relative to the area’s size (Figure 3)), and the Kansai area, which is a major demand center with high levels of intra-area transport, have been determined as priority areas for further analysis. Going forward, a total of 28 companies—consignors and logistics providers combined—will collaboratively work under the proactive leadership of the logistics providers to promote the planned initiatives. Consignors and logistics providers will also work together to design and verify logistics schemes with a view toward their implementation, including joint collection and delivery, joint warehousing, and the utilization of relay hubs in each area.

In addition, it is planned to implement measures previously developed by the Chemicals WG, such as the use of standard pallets, review of delivery lead times, and application of the Standard Guidelines for Chemicals Logistics Information^*4, to accelerate the stabilization of medium- to long-term transportation and the implementation of joint logistics across the entire industry.

This project is a groundbreaking initiative aimed at visualizing the actual flow of specific freight across the entire industry and using that insight to develop new logistics schemes. Generally, because it is difficult to grasp the actual state of freight flow, discussions tend to be based on data from a single company or just a few companies. By gaining an overview of the industry as a whole, it has become clear that, for example, five or more companies are making separate deliveries to a particular city, town, or village. Exploring ways to bundle these deliveries and considering future possibilities for joint operations, including changes to logistics conditions such as revising lead times, represent a major step toward building a sustainable logistics system.