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The urban freight transport (UFT) is an important component of the urban logistics. It represents a driving force for the economic dynamics and attractiveness of a city. It can be treated as all movements of goods necessary for the economic activities, the institutions and the residents of urban life. Through, it faces with problems relating to the congestion, unsafety, atmospheric and noise pollution that constrain its performance and hinder its development. This performance is a complex subject on which a great deal of research has emerged in the last decade. Accordingly, this paper aims to develop a model for assessing the performance of the UFT. The objective is to identify the determinants of the performance of the urban freight transport and measure the impact of each factor. Therefore the first part of this article concerns the elaboration of the model and the formulation of the hypotheses. First, an overview of the factors that could influence the performance of the UFT was identified based on a literature review. The result of this step allowed to model, by mobilizing the GRAI grid (Graph of results and interrelated activities), the UFT system in order to release the decisional links between these factors. Then, the grid will be decomposed into hypotheses explaining the relations between the factors and the performance of the UFT. The formulation of each hypothesis will be based on all the theoretical works that have treated it. The second part includes the empirical study to test the model using the partial least squares (PLS) analysis. Therefore, we conducted a survey among managers and users of the UFT in the city of Fez. A hypothetico-deductive approach has been used with a sequential methodological complementarity between qualitative analysis for exploratory purposes and the support of quantitative analysis for confirmation. The results of the test, confirm a significant influence of the identified factors on the UFT performance. The practical scope of this paper is to provide a decision-making framework for urban management department explaining the impact of these factors on the UFT performance.

The present paper reports on studying synchronous flow implementation, as a lean supply chain tools, through a collaborative relationship with suppliers. This involves consolidating with a new contribution to the development and application of a supply chain collaboration framework between automotive constructor and first-tier equipment suppliers to achieve the synchronous flow of components. The objective is to provide the automotive companies with a decision-making tool for selecting strategic suppliers to collaborate with, examining the collaboration context in terms of motivators, drivers, and barriers and evaluating the collaboration performance. Therefore, our contribution is structured as follows. As a first step, an overview of papers reporting on collaboration, lean supply chain, and synchronous flow is provided to identify the key elements of successful collaboration relationships. As a result, a preliminary framework is elaborated. The second step described the case study of a leading automotive firm “RENAULT” and its suppliers in Morocco. Based on semi-structured interviews conducted with participants from these companies, the preliminary framework was improved. The next section discusses the obtained results as well as the improved framework. Finally, conclusions and suggestions for further works are included.

Roads and parking areas represent a place of conflict between freight vehicles and other urban activities, especially on mixed residential and commercial streets. This conflict results in traffic congestion, illegal parking, pollution and road safety problems. The challenge is to allocate public space between the right operating activities, parking activities, public transport and so on. To address that, urban logistics delivery bays, also known as loading/unloading (L/U) zones, have become a real solution to facilitate the delivery and pick-up operations of urban freight vehicles, ensure accessibility for delivery drivers, reduce congestion and improve road safety. Therefore, this paper reports on planning and enforcement of urban delivery bays needs. It is part of the urban freight transport (UFT) surveys. This involves consolidating with new contribution the development, implementation and statistical analysis of a survey in order to quantify the need of delivery areas. Compared to the existing literature, this paper presents a mixed applied methodology which is divided into two parts : “Exploratory survey” and “Establishment-vehicle observation” survey. These two surveys techniques were conducted to offer an overview of the freight vehicle delivery and pick-up frequency according to the daytime and weekdays and the operations related to the loading/unloading activities. This makes it possible to estimate the delivery bays requirement in the study area. The findings from a methodological and practical angle are illustrated through a real case study in a commercial street in Morocco. The findings suggest that 60% of deliveries are made between 8:00 A.M and 12 A.M, and the movements generated by each establishment are 257 movements. For this, the study zone requires the development of three loading/unloading (L/U) bays. The main contribution is to propose an approach that urban authorities can use to estimate urban delivery areas efficiently and thus allow simple replication of the proposed framework in other cities.