1. Scope

Establish a logical, harmonized industry “best practice” that will enable seamless communication of container availability across global supply chains. Container availability is a concept that applies in many steps in the journey of goods from Seller to Buyer and the criteria for availability may differ in each step. The “best practice” is expected to involve a unique digital load identifier, linked with associated transport units (e.g., containers), as well as some technical specifications to ensure consistent implementation and interoperability across the actors in the relevant supply chain activities. The scope of the recommended practice starts when the need to transport goods/cargo from where they are to where they should be has been identified. The scope ends when this need for transportation has been fulfilled and all associated processes have been completed.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This post on LinkedIn provides some visuals and additional details.
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https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7079482552964530177/
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The scope extends all the way from the sender of the goods to the receiver also in case they are in different countries.

The ASTM F49 Technical Committee (TC) on Digital Information in the Supply Chain recognizes that the challenges related to container availability are different for the Export stage versus those in the Import stage. Therefore, the F49 TC expects that subject matter experts for these stages will work on the challenges in a specific stage whilst ensuring the best practices for each stage remain consistent and interoperable within the context of the end-to-end supply chain.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The intent of the work is to leverage existing standards where feasible and create new ones only where required.
F49 refers to this end-to-end journey as the Goods Movement Process.

Events, Statuses, and Milestones related to the load will need to be communicated to achieve a good common understanding of container availability. These events should be understood unambiguously by all actors also in terms of exactly when a specific event is considered to have occurred (the trigger point) within a commonly well-understood goods movement management process.

Keywords

multi-modal; track and trace; collaboration; synchronization of activities; demurrage

Rationale

MTOs, Shipping Exchanges, and Beneficial Cargo Owners (BCOs) adopting the results from the work proposed would be able to accurately and unambiguously capture, exchange and interpret estimated and actual event status changes for both the import and export stages. In turn that will enable many benefits including better insight into container availability and a much smoother and swifter flow of goods through ports.

The title and scope are in draft form and are under development within this ASTM Committee.