Railway Industrial Track as the Last Mile in Supply Chain Management

Today’s transport of goods has its renaissance once again in using railways as part of the transport chain. In the past because of inert railways the very big amount of goods went to road transport. Of course, in these days, it is very ecological to do modal shift from road to railway. Therefore, the railway is again one of the key players in the transport chain. Supply chain management is an integrated approach for solving all movements of goods from the point of origin to the point of destination. Specifically, in the last five years there is very intensive research and use of supply chain management. Normally, every transport has the last and first mile, so it is very pragmatic to optimize this step in the whole transport chain. With the greater role of railways in whole supply chain management the last mile becomes very significant. In today’s railway, the last mile is on railway industrial track for more than 85% of goods transport. Therefore, it is very important to optimize every aspect of using railway industrial track. Key aspects are (1) legal, (2) organizational, (3) technical, (4) technological and (5) economic. All those five aspects are crucial for using railway industrial track as the part of supply chain management. This article presents a case study of using the railway industrial track in Croatia and the interaction and optimization of key aspects.