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The Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) today unveiled a new set of common standards for the tracking and tracing of shipping containers in global supply chains.

DCSA chief executive Thomas Bagge said the DCSA was “directly engaging” customer representatives, such as FIATA, CLECAT and the European Shippers Council, to raise awareness among liner shipping customers that the standards will allow any industry stakeholder to enable container shipment tracking across carriers and systems.

The DCSA track and trace (T&T) standard comprises an information model and interface standards that can be freely downloaded from the DCSA website, here.

The data model ensures T&T data definitions are consistent for all users, leveraging any system, and the definitions are based on the industry blueprint, published by DCSA and its carrier members last year, which established a consistent vocabulary and proposed a common set of industry processes.

The T&T standards are also aligned with those of the UN/CEFACT (United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business), “to provide a global industry framework that preserves existing investments and streamlines communication among all supply chain participants”.

For customers, the new standard will simplify shipment visibility across multiple carriers, enabling them to better plan and optimise shipment handling activities, while for carriers, it will unify T&T information-sharing with other parties, “ensuring accurate and efficient communication regardless of the underlying technology or platform”.

Mr Bagge said: “As DCSA standards are technology- and vendor-neutral, every organisation providing shipment tracking information to its customers today will benefit from adopting our T&T standard, because it will simplify data integration with carriers and improve information quality.”

He told The Loadstar the published standards would likely be adapted over time to suit emerging business trends.

“It’s a very fragmented industry, particularly in terms of the forwarders and shippers, and I suspect it’s unavoidable that we will have to adjust these as we go forward and get more feedback.

“Also, over time new technology will arrive, and keeping the standards up to date will be an important part of our work,” he added.

The establishment of the T&T standards represents a considerable step for the DCSA, given that the Amsterdam-based organisation is not yet a year into its existence. It was launched by MSC, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and ONE last April, with CMA CGM, Yang Ming, Evergreen, HMM and Zim joining a month later – and only released its “industry blueprint” in June, shortly after Mr Bagge was appointed chief executive.

“The industry is behind travel, banking and other industries in terms of digitisation, and if the shipping industry wants to be serious about this, we have to move fast. “We are really pleased with the level of commitment from our carrier members and have had a handsome increase in budget this year,” he told The Loadstar yesterday.

New projects include cyber security rules being prepared for 2021: “We will be happy to share those with any shipowner.

“From the customers’ perspective, the next projects will be looking at IoT and smart containers and how we improve flow optimisation that will help with issues such as the repositioning of empty containers.

“My personal hope is that soon we will be able to turn to the documentation side of the business, because it is there that there are huge gains to be made,” he added.

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