Intelligent Carrier Selection & Strategic Carrier Management
Overview
| Company Name / Department | Ewals Cargo Care |
| Contact Person | Wout Munsters |
| Location | Tegelen, 5931 HM Netherlands |
| Optional remote work | Yes |
| Travel expenses (own account or reimbursed by the company) | Own account |
| NoHousing arranged by company |
No |
| Housing expenses (how much per month, own account or subsidized by the company) | |
| Internship compensation | |
| Study program | |
| Start date | September 2026 |
Company Description
Ewals Cargo Care (ECC) is a leading European logistics service provider specializing in multimodal transport solutions, including road, rail, and intermodal services. With a strong pan-European network and a focus on sustainability and innovation, ECC supports customers with reliable, efficient, and scalable logistics solutions.
To support its growth ambition, ECC is investing in digital transformation initiatives such as the Pulse platform. Within this platform, Carrier Management and Pulse Procurement play a key role in structuring, scaling, and optimizing the carrier network across Europe. The goal is to evolve from transactional sourcing to strategic, data-driven carrier collaboration.
Project Description
ECC is developing a future-proof Carrier Management process within the Pulse Procurement ecosystem.
Key modules include:
- A single source of truth for carrier master data, including lane-level performance and integration with other Pulse modules
- Structured and repeatable sourcing for lanes and transport packages, including analysis, sourcing events, and selection decisions
Currently, carrier selection is partly manual, and experience driven. To support ECC’s scale and resilience ambitions, there is a need to transition toward Intelligent Carrier Selection: a data-driven, scalable approach that optimizes carrier allocation based on multiple criteria such as price, performance, availability, and strategic fit.
This thesis will focus on designing and validating a decision-support model or framework for intelligent carrier selection and strategic carrier management, embedded within the Pulse Procurement vision.
The research should bridge theory and practice by combining:
- Operations research / optimization techniques
- Data analytics and performance management
- Procurement and supply chain strategy
Goal of the Project
Develop a data-driven framework or model for Intelligent Carrier Selection that supports ECC in allocating transport demand to carriers in an optimal, scalable, and resilient way.
Deliverables
- Define relevant carrier selection criteria (cost, service level, reliability, flexibility, strategic importance, etc.)
- Design a multi-criteria decision model / optimization approach
- Integrate insights from Carrier Database and Sourcing module requirements
- Develop a concept for lane-based or package-based allocation strategies
- Identify how the model can be embedded into Pulse Procurement workflows
Essential student knowledge
Experience with:
- Data analysis tools (Python, Power BI)
- Optimization or operations research techniques
- Multi-criteria decision-making methods
- Affinity with procurement and supplier management
- Ability to translate data insights into business decisions
More information: escf@tue.nl
