An Open Logistics Interconnection model for the Physical Internet

Computer networks have been interconnected through the last decades with huge advantage into a worldwide Digital Internet. Unlike their digital counterparts, logistics networks remain highly fragmented, still mostly dedicated to a company or a specific market. The recently introduced Physical Internet concept proposes to remedy this situation by interconnecting logistics services on a global scale. The implementation and deployment of the Digital Internet has profited extensively from a structured and a standardized approach to interconnect networks. Indeed, the layered structuring of digital services and protocols associated to both the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model and the TCP/IP model has been instrumental in shaping the Digital Internet. This paper proposes, describes and illustrates a seven-layer Open Logistics Interconnection (OLI) model to enable interconnecting logistics services within the Physical Internet. It describes each proposed layer and the way logistic services are organized within and across these layers.