“What format is the basic timestamp data coming from the carriers and the rail operators?“

I asked that question during a vendor pitch for predictive yard-congestion algorithms, back when the hype was all about proprietary platforms and blockchain. Nobody answered.

I wasn’t surprised. The buzzwords change, but the pattern doesn’t. Today shipping is drowning in talk of artificial intelligence that will magically dissolve supply chain friction overnight. After forty years in container shipping IT, I’ve learned that software doesn’t fix a broken process. It just runs it faster.

Before we buy the intelligence, we should inspect the plumbing.

A port doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It’s an intersection of ships, cranes, rail yards and gates, and cargo neither starts at the berth nor ends at the gate. The problems happen at the handoffs.

A vessel crosses an ocean on schedule, then waits two days at anchor for a berth. A crane breaks a productivity record, and the boxes sit for three days waiting for rail coordination or missing paperwork. Speed at the quay means nothing if the handoff fails.

When we looked behind that pitch, the problem was obvious. One carrier logged a departure the moment the mooring lines were released. Another logged it only once the ship cleared the breakwater. The terminal recorded arrival at the truck gate, and the rail operator logged it six hours later, in a spreadsheet sent by email.

The vendor wanted to feed algorithms with data that couldn’t even agree on what “departure” meant. Using analytics on dirty data and mismatched definitions does not create intelligence; it automates confusion at scale.

Why does this persist? Each party’s definition suits its own contracts, systems and liabilities, and aligning them means giving up a little control. Nobody is paid to move first. So every connection becomes a bespoke integration, built by consultants. This is a coordination failure, not a technical one.

Rail makes the cost visible. A train slot is fixed: if a container’s release status is uncertain, the slot is wasted or the box waits for the next one. Multiply that across hundreds of boxes a day and the yard fills with cargo that is physically ready but digitally unconfirmed.

The good news is that the definitions already exist. Open industry standards for just-in-time port calls specify dozens of event timestamps and the interfaces to exchange them, aligned with the IMO and the International Taskforce on Port Call Optimization. Amendments to the IMO FAL Convention have required public authorities to run single windows for the electronic exchange of ship-port data since January 2024.

In other words, the question is no longer what to standardise, but who adopts it.

Take just-in-time arrivals. When port authorities, terminals, pilots and carriers share timestamps in a common format, a ship can adjust its speed days before arrival and berth without anchoring. An IMO-commissioned study using 2019 vessel-tracking data estimated average fuel savings of about 4% when optimising the last twelve hours and 14% across the whole voyage. That is not green theory, it’s basic operational discipline, and it begins with agreeing on what an “arrival” is.

What does fixing this look like? Start by agreeing on a shared vocabulary of events: what counts as arrival, departure or ready for pickup, and who records it. Then expose that data through open, documented APIs instead of emailed spreadsheets, with timestamps in a single time standard. Finally, measure data quality (timeliness and completeness) as seriously as we measure crane moves per hour. What gets measured gets fixed.

Openness carries risk. Arrival estimates and berth availability are commercially sensitive, competition rules make operators cautious about sharing, and retrofitting legacy systems is expensive. These constraints are real. But they argue for neutral, governed standards, not for every party building its own dialect.

A closed tool for a single terminal can deliver local value, but its ceiling is low. No single carrier or terminal will ever own the whole chain, so the real value sits in the open, trusted layer that everyone connects to; not in any one tool.

I expect the competitive edge in port technology to shift from who has the cleverest prediction to who can reliably exchange trusted data. The first measurable gains will come from unglamorous work: harmonised timestamps, open APIs, shared definitions.

The future of port technology won’t come from glossy pitch decks. It will come from practical systems that solve real friction for the people moving the boxes. Those who fix the basics now will use AI well when it matures. The rest will keep paying to automate their confusion.

References

• International Maritime Organization (2022), Lowering containership emissions through Just In Time arrivals. Study by MarineTraffic and Energy and Environmental Research Associates for the IMO-Norway GreenVoyage2050 project.
• Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), Just-in-Time Port Call Data Definitions and Interface Standards, https://dcsa.org/standards/port-call
• International Maritime Organization, Facilitation Committee (May 2022), amendments to the annex of the FAL Convention on mandatory single window systems for the electronic exchange of information, in force 1 January 2024.