DC Velocity - July 2014

4 DC VELOCITY JULY 2014 www.dcvelocity.com inbound

The complexity and global nature of today’s supply chains make it hard to obtain complete, accurate, and timely shipment data. An initiative launched by Inttra, an e-commerce platform for managing ocean shipping transactions, aims to address that problem by improving the quality of the information ocean carriers provide to their customers. Inttra has visibility into bookings, documentation, and shipping transactions for about 35 percent of the world’s container traffic, according to Chief Marketing Officer Sandra Moran.

The initiative includes several elements. The first establishes measurements
for the completeness, accuracy, and timeliness of container shipment infor-
mation, based on a set of messages marking key milestone events. Initially,
Accuracy is measured by com-
paring the six events against the
transportation booking. Timeliness
is measured by assessing whether
data about the events are submitted
in the correct chronological order.

The second element, the cloud-based Insights Platform for Visibility, lets customers access, analyze, and respond to container event data. The third identifies which event data are missing, and from where. Inttra drills down by carrier, country, port, and individual container terminal to help identify the source of a data problem.

In March, the five best countries when it came to providing complete container milestone data were (in descending order) Hong Kong, Chile, Thailand, Canada, and Australia. The worst were China, Turkey, the United States, South Korea, and India. The five best-scoring countries represented 5 percent of the incomplete shipments the technology firm measured, while the five worst represented 47 percent.

Why is it so hard to get information from ocean carriers that is complete, accurate, and in chronological order? One reason is that the data are handled in a variety of formats and methods, including manually. Another, Moran said, is that the carriers aren’t generating most of the event data themselves; rather, they receive information, often out of sequence, from ports, terminal operators, and other sources and pass it on to customers, often via a third party.

In addition to its own program, Inttra is collaborating with the international data standards organization GS1 US to develop and implement guidelines for the automated formatting and exchange of containerized shipping data. The GS1 US Logistics Workgroup will develop automated processes, a standard set of container delivery events, and targets for timely data transmission. The group will also further define the shipment data to be exchanged and create best practices documentation.

Mission: Improve visibility of ocean shipments

Earlier this year, representatives from public and private entities in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., tested their ability to respond to a supply chain emergency. With smartphones in hand, they participated in a disaster simulation that requires players to choose distribution strategies and allocation methods to counteract resource constraints. The game illustrates the beneficial impact on communities when players employ a collaborative response, according to the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), which conducted the training sessions with support from a Baltimore Gas & Electric Emergency Response and Safety Grant. Participants included students, government officials, and representatives from private industry and nonprofit agencies.

The workshops were hosted in late March by the National Capital Area Roundtable of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) in Washington, D.C., and by the Howard County (Md.) Community Emergency Response Network and Chamber of Commerce. Undergraduate supply chain students at the University of Maryland’s R.H. Smith School of Business also played the simulation game, while graduate students conducted a more complex exercise simulating coordination of an entire community’s disaster response.