End-to-End Supply Chain

The global supply chain, a dynamic web connecting the farthest reaches of the world, orchestrates the movement of goods with precision and efficiency. Within this complex environment, international ports serve as gateways and nerve centres through which the ecosystem is orchestrated, thereby ensuring the seamless flow of commerce across borders.

Digitalisation provides opportunities for actors leveraging and operating in the self-organising ecosystem of supply chain and logistics to get aligned. Proactive co-producers empower their own operations through digitally created situational awareness capturing what others are doing and plan to do but also what happens/is expected to happen in their part of the chain.

Predictability of goods delivery asks for planning data to flow, the COVID-19 pandemic taught us. Two years and a lot of talk later, it has become clear that achieving data collaboration in a fragmented supply chain is anything but straightforward. As centralised platform solutions have met their limitations, complementary decentralised methods of data collaboration are promising but still under development.

As ports increase the size and scope of on-dock rail facilities, terminal operators need innovative solutions to increase throughput and efficiency. With global supply chains breaking down due to unexpected surges in demand, large gateway ports face unprecedented challenges in clearing cargo.

A simple way of explaining the concept of a Port Community System (PCS) is the spider’s web: a PCS is at the centre of the web, enabling stakeholders (port authority, terminal operator, Customs and other authorities, shipping line, agent, haulier, rail operator and so on …) to exchange real-time information via a secure and neutral platform, thus driving and supporting the smooth and swift flow of messages and cargo.

Dr. Felix Kasiske spoke to Port Technology International about hinterland connectivity and the increasing need of automation and the challenges of adjusting processes, and integration of all equipment into the existing IT landscape of rail terminals

Bimal Kanal, Director of TradeLens, Indian Subcontinent, spoke to Port Technology International about TradeLens, the blockchain based supply chain initiative jointly managed by A.P. Moeller-Maersk and IBM, and how it can evolve

Speaking exclusively with Port Technology International, Kasper Krog, Head of Intercontinental Rail at A.P. Moller – Maersk, looks beyond the port and to the railways as an integral part of the supply chain

There have been innovations in each and every part of supply chain which has led to complexity and difficulty in tracking of products.