Securing the world's supply chains

The SMART-CM (Smart Container Chain Management) project is a research project that is co-funded in the context of the seventh research framework programe of the EU by DG RTD, and by partners from freight-related industries. It deals primarily with the possibility of using state-of-the-art technologies for enhancing security and the efficiency of global supply chains, as well as attaining agreement among all relevant actors as to how this should be achieved.

With millions of containers being transported around the world at any one time, maintaining security and monitoring them can be a daunting task. Carriers have to maintain communications with numerous different actors such as customs authorities, logistics service providers and transporters, and each of these actors will usually have their own technologies and processes to deal with the containers. However, a European project is aiming to change this by providing a standardised, secured and trusted platform that can be used by all, creating efficiency and improving security.

SMART-CM Project Coordinator Dr Georgia Ayfandopoulou explains how the concepts behind the project were conceived. “A few years ago, the EU made a specific call for research for alternative technological solutions to enhance security along global supply chains,” she says. “We answered this call and decided that, unlike most other projects covering this issue in the past, that we would like to assess what the industrial actors would like to see in terms of security measurements for containers transport as well as what the authorities required.”

The challenge that Dr Ayfandopoulou and the multinational SMART-CM consortium she is coordinating were facing was to review the entire global door-to-door supply chain so as to bring it up to speed in terms of efficiency, competitiveness and security.

“We started from an idea originally brought up by the Belgian customs authorities,” explains Dr Ayfandopoulou. “They have a concept called ‘green lanes’, which is the establishment of fast, secure trade lanes for containers provided that they have been checked by authorised relevant authorities when being packed and are monitored throughout their journey by a container security device that provides regular security status information. In the case these requirements would be satisfied for a specific container, then customs would give it the ‘green light’, meaning that it will not need to be checked when entering their territory.”

From this idea, the SMART-CM project has identified and offered solutions to the Green Lane concept implementation and to a number of different logistical problems. The first of these is the creation of an ‘interoperable single window platform’. This will allow all stakeholders involved in the transport chain to monitor the status of a container, regardless of what container security device technology is being used, and will not be biased towards any specific technology provider, customs authority or business.

However, to ensure this absolutely non-biased stance is not an easy task, and so another branch of the SMART-CM project has been to look into what is known as a ‘neutral information administering organisation’. This is essentially a body that is unaffiliated to any of the relevant actors that would manage the platform, guaranteeing data integrity throughout the process and providing the service of relaying the data from the platform to anyone who needs it. The identity of an organisation has been fully specified in the context of the project and the economic viability of platform operation was also defined. It is now up to the relevant actors and customs authorities to “embrace” the idea and make it happen.

After two years of SMART-CM solution demonstration in real trade lanes from Asia to Europe, crucially, customs authorities from outside of the EU are now warming to the idea of standardised procedures and operations such as green lanes thanks to the efforts of the project. Common understanding with China, Thailand and Singapore authorities have been supported by the project and with time hopefully the project concept and solutions will become even more widespread.

Dr Ayfandopoulou explains another way in which the project provides benefits to the transport & logistics industry: “Using technology we can increase security and efficiency in global trade lanes, but there is always the underlying issue of who is going to pay for this technology,” she says. “By taking into account the requirements of all of the actors, we have created services that are actually valuable to the transport industry, whereas before these security regulations were always seen as somewhat of a burden.

“For instance, we are now able to provide incredibly accurate data on estimating the time of arrival of a container, not only for the final destination but at any point throughout the journey that any actor will specify as important for better managing its own and specific internal productive processes. Based on the real time container status information the system provides, port terminals can improve efficiency in managing their capacities, hinterland transport operators can achieve better management of their assets, cargo owners can optimise stock management and production processes planning.

Finally all actors and mainly logistics service providers can benefit from efficient exception handling and easy rescheduling of the containers in order to handle unexpected situations that always occur along the complex global container transport chains.”

The impacts that this project could have are multiple and extend to all of the stakeholders involved in the transport chain. Of particular importance is the project impact to technology industry competitiveness.

The container security devices can now operate “under” one platform, and the project has brought industrial and technological partners together to form a consensus on what direction the technology should be advancing in and what standards should be met. Achieving interoperability among Container Security Devices technologies actually means that these technology providers are able to offer more to the final clients than they were before, so this should allow them to achieve greater market penetration.

When asked about the future of the project, Dr Ayfandopoulou is very positive about where the project is going: “We now have a fully functional platform, and have identified these different ways of exploiting the platform as a whole to provide benefits for everyone involved. We have had a number of successful demonstrations to partners who have been impressed at the progress being made, and we would also like to have some further demonstrations so that people can familiarise themselves with the platform services.

“There are some areas which still require some further consideration, however,” she continues. “For instance, we would like to support technology industry agreement at global level defined by the project performance indicators for the container security devices in order to facilitate the pursuit of a global solution and implementation process. We also need to think a little more about how to ensure that the administrators for one or many regional neutral platforms are actually neutral and therefore trusted by the transport industry actors in sharing sensitive information with the platform! But apart from this, I believe that the system as a whole or specific modules of it could be easily integrated and put into full operation fairly rapidly.” Increased reliability, faster response and improved flexibility are just some of the benefits of supply chain security realised by the project, and so hopefully they will start being integrated in the near future so that these advantages can be conferred to all involved as soon as possible.

Click here to access the project website.

Published: Monday, 23rd January 2012