The word ‘smart’ is much used in today’s world and sometimes glibly. Let’s face it, we have smart watches, smart refrigerators, smart televisions and the obligatory smart phone of course. So why not smart containers? IIMS is always keen to delve into coming technologies and the developments going on behind the scenes to deliver the smart container project are fascinating. So, if you are a self-confessed dinosaur, prepare for a tough read ahead! Dr. Hanane Becha takes up the story.
Complex supply chains inherently involve many different intermediaries as they move goods from point A to point B. Each party’s processes have been developed to achieve specific objectives within its role in the intermodal supply chain, creating multiple perspectives and information “silos.” As a result, no single party has complete door-to-door visibility of cargo during transport. This fact leaves many opportunities for errors and communication gaps—making it difficult to answer real-time questions and enable fully informed decisions.
The Ideal Real Time Insight Ideally, real-time data can be integrated directly into stakeholders’ risk analysis and decision-making processes. This is where the UN/ CEFACT Smart Container project adds so much value to the industry. The Smart Container project goal is to define data elements generated from smart containers and to develop a data model that will enable development of Smart Container Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
A preliminary white paper published in December 2018, provides a detailed look at the benefits of using Smart Containers and potential use cases. Smart Container Business Requirements Specifications (BRS) were released in September 2019, providing an official global standard that includes detailed value propositions for multiple smart container use cases focused on data inputs, outputs, values, and formats.
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any chosen syntax. Traditionally, APIs were developed from scratch for specific integrations and languages. Today however, APIs are increasingly used to integrate various turnkey services and data sources for the purpose of enriching or augmenting existing business processes and workflows.
Data elements have been defined and a Smart Container Standard Data Model is being finalized. The data model defines communication semantics—consistent meanings regardless of context—ensuring all stakeholders interpret data the same way. Syntax rules specify the correct combined sequence of symbols that can be used to form a correctly structured program in a given programming language. Both are essential foundational elements for developing smart container standard APIs. The UN/CEFACT Core Components Library is a huge catalogue of semantic definitions for business data that can be reused across multiple business sectors. The library is extensible and continuously evolves to meet changing needs of buy/ship/pay process stakeholders.
The next step is defining APIs— agreed-upon data flows with syntax and semantics that enable stakeholders to connect and invoke third-party services in their business process workflows. APIs are the glue between different services that enable this integration. With standard APIs available to the industry, stakeholders will benefit from an explosion of new capabilities for connecting and integrating data across the intermodal supply chain ecosystem.
API Development via the Smart Container Project An API is a source code-based specification that allows different software components—or services—to communicate with each other. APIs can be created in
A turnkey service is like a black box. The service contains everything it needs and defines the service inputs, outputs, and required semantics. The service description should communicate what happens when the service is invoked and identify the conditions for using the service. There is no need for the stakeholder to understand or to master the logic behind the service.
With APIs as the “glue” between multiple turnkey services and data sources, adding business process capabilities can become agile, cost- efficient plug-and-play exercises. APIs not only enable powerful new data services and applications; they simplify continuous adaptation to changing business requirements.
In a step-by-step methodology, the Smart Container project is using defined data elements’ semantic and syntactic descriptions to develop the functional behaviour of API operations:
Step 1: Identify stakeholders and smart container services that could enhance their business processes. Clear value propositions are described based on Smart Container data scoping different services. The UN/CEFACT white paper promotes smart container adoption by providing use cases for decision makers across the supply chain ecosystem and answering questions like “what is in it for me? Why should I care?” This step is complete.
Step 2: Derive smart container- transmitted data elements based on use cases. Some of these data elements, such as “consignor” and “consignee” are already part of the Core Components Library. Other data elements are new, such as different smart container
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