How Standard APIs Open the Door to Powerful Digital Services
By Hanane Becha, PhD Computer Sciences
Innovation & Standards Senior Manager
UN/CEFACT Smart Container Project Leader
Complex supply chains inherently involve many different intermediaries as they move goods from point A to point B. Each party’s processes have been developed to achieve specific objectives within its role in the intermodal supply chain, creating multiple perspectives and information “silos.” As a result, no single party has complete door-to-door visibility of cargo during transport. This fact leaves many opportunities for errors and communication gaps—making it difficult to answer real-time questions and enable fully informed decisions.
The Ideal—Real-Time Insight
Ideally, real-time data can be integrated directly into stakeholders’ risk analysis and decision-making processes. This is where the UN/CEFACT Smart Container project adds so much value to the industry. The Smart Container project goal is to define data elements generated from smart containers and to develop a data model that will enable development of Smart Container Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
A preliminary white paper published in December 2018, provides a detailed look at the benefits of using Smart Containers and potential use cases. Smart Container Business Requirements Specifications (BRS) were released in September 2019, providing an official global standard that includes detailed value propositions for multiple smart container use cases focused on data inputs, outputs, values, and formats.
Data elements have been defined and a Smart Container Standard Data Model is being finalized. The data model defines communication semantics—consistent meanings regardless of context—ensuring all stakeholders interpret data the same way. Syntax rules specify the correct combined sequence of symbols that can be used to form a correctly structured program in a given programming language. Both are essential foundational elements for developing smart container standard APIs. The UN/CEFACT Core Components Library is a huge catalogue of semantic definitions for business data that can be reused across multiple business sectors. The library is extensible and continuously evolves to meet changing needs of buy/ship/pay process stakeholders.
The next step is defining APIs—agreed-upon data flows with syntax and semantics that enable stakeholders to connect and invoke third-party services in their business process workflows. APIs are the glue between different services that enable this integration. With standard APIs available to the industry, stakeholders will benefit from an explosion of new capabilities for connecting and integrating data across the intermodal supply chain ecosystem.
API Development via the Smart Container Project
An API is a source code-based specification that allows different software components—or services—to communicate with each other. APIs can be created in any chosen syntax. Traditionally, APIs were developed from scratch for specific integrations and languages. Today however, APIs are increasingly used to integrate various turnkey services and data sources for the purpose of enriching or augmenting existing business processes and workflows.
A turnkey service is like a black box. The service contains everything it needs and defines the service inputs, outputs, and required semantics. The service description should communicate what happens when the service is invoked and identify the conditions for using the service. There is no need for the stakeholder to understand or to master the logic behind the service.
With APIs as the “glue” between multiple turnkey services and data sources, adding business process capabilities can become agile, cost-efficient plug-and-play exercises. APIs not only enable powerful new data services and applications, they simplify continuous adaptation to changing business requirements.
In a step-by-step methodology, the Smart Container project is using defined data elements’ semantic and syntactic descriptions to develop the functional behavior of API operations:
Step 1: Identify stakeholders and smart container services that could enhance their business processes. Clear value propositions are described based on Smart Container data scoping different services. The UN/CEFACT white paper promotes smart container adoption by providing use cases for decision makers across the supply chain ecosystem and answering questions like “what is in it for me? Why should I care?” This step is complete.
Step 2: Derive smart container-transmitted data elements based on use cases. Some of these data elements, such as “consignor” and “consignee” are already part of the Core Components Library. Other data elements are new, such as different smart container physical measurements and parameters. In addition to the periodic measurements, new data elements also include inputs such as expected physical values or trip plan descriptions that enable the smart container solution provider to generate alerts and predictive values, like Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA). The Library provides clear semantic data exchange standards so all stakeholders understand the same data element in the same way. The deliverable is the Smart Container Business Requirements Specifications (BRS). This step is complete.
Step 3: Select required data elements from the Library for the smart container project and define semantics for all new generated data elements and their relationships. This includes creating semantics for business definitions and data structures. The deliverable will be a data model and associated schema based on the UN/CEFACT Multi-Modal Transport Reference Data Model, which is a subset of the Core Components Library. This step is in progress.
Step 4: Select a subset of data to define a contextualized message structure to meet the requirements of a given use case. The message structure is technology-agnostic—independent of the technology used to communicate the data. This step is in progress.
Step 5: Define the message from the syntax point of view using a chosen technology, which will result in API definitions based on standardized data elements. This step is planned.
The UN/CEFACT Smart Container project is a collaborative initiative comprised of volunteer experts (over 50) from intergovernmental organizations, individual countries’ authorities, and the business community. Adoption of UN/CEFACT standards is entirely voluntary.
Envisioning the State of the Art
Today, there is a need for a clear data exchange standard to enhance the collaboration between multiple stakeholders that are involved in the information linked to a single smart container.
Hence, stakeholders are increasingly reluctant to adopt proprietary standards and risk being locked into one solution provider. Agreed-upon API standards enable stakeholders to adopt the services of their choice and add or change providers as their business needs require—without the fear of obsolescence, high support costs for legacy technology, or inability to meet customers’ needs. Without defined standards, Smart Container solution providers will have to develop their own interfaces to each stakeholder, adding cost and slowing time to market.
The Smart Container project aims to create the state of the art in providing and exposing services that can be orchestrated and enriched to meet business process needs of any intermodal ecosystem stakeholder. The availability and exposition of these services can boost the digital transformation of the transportation and logistics industry, fueling innovation in applications and services.
For more information, contact Hanane BECHA, UN/CEFACT Smart Container Project Lead, at h.becha@traxens.com.
Hanane Becha 