Standards for port call activities could provide a basis for a data exchange system for status, and could also provide motivation for a priority basis for specific containers.
There’s currently no message or signaling system allowing all the supply chain partners to move a given container to know the required speed of service. Partners can’t coordinate unless they know precisely which containers need to be moved when.
The standards for service steps in the port would make it easier to determine when a container was behind schedule and expediting was needed to meet the level of service guaranteed.
Of course, the standards proposed by DCSA need to be tried out by ports, and the system needs to be tweaked based on what they find. But it’s a good start.
The Supply Chain Shaman, Lora Cecere, always has something interesting to say and valuable to think about.
Her numbers show that supply-chain related firms are right now simply making incremental improvements on existing systems, and are ignoring the need to go out there and find new ways of gathering and making use of supply chain data.
Systems people for years have known that you have to re-engineer the processes, the ways of doing business, and the software must support that. While it may turn out that the software is already right to support new processes, it’s much more likely that entirely new forms of software are required for the processes to work properly and fluidly.
That means analysts and business process participants together must spend the time needed to truly understand what they need to accomplish, and put in the up-front research and planning to get the system designed well. Few companies are willing to tolerate the time required. But that’s where the true value is realized.
I was just reading an article that tried to set forth a design strategy for a Port Communication System for ports in South Africa. Currently they don’t have them. But the article was at such a high-level that there was no insight into the new procedures and methods that would be needed to really bring these ports into the 21st Century. I’m afraid that much development of supply chain systems is done in that way. We look at existing processes instead of imagining how the processes and the whole scenario could be different. And once we’ve imagined the new world, we can see that the systems have to be different.
So the message to supply chain firms is to put on your imagining cap and plan systems that actually make quantum improvements; done just band-aid the old processes.
WRITTEN BY LORA CECERE• NOVEMBER 3, 2021• 3:04 PM• ANALYTICS, BIG DATA SUPPLY CHAINS
Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks Maersk is staking out a monopoly position, discriminating against forwarders.
I think Maersk and others are in danger of killing off forwarders, and also customers. Larger customers will look at private transport. Small customers will mistrust Maersk’s platform, and evaluate its performance against the others out there, such as DP World’s. So it better work lots better than the others, not likely an advantage that can be sustained for long, nor for every type of customer. Many forwarders have end-to-end booking platforms.
I bet even large forwarders will start chartering ships if current price conditions for container shipments continue for long, like till Spring 2023.
And actually, I did not have to wait long. IN THE SAME LOADSTAR, on 10/22/2021, I found the second article.
Supply Chain and Logistics 