E-Logistics

Managing Digital Supply Chains for Competitive Advantage

Yingli Wang, Stephen Pettit

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780749496890
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Operations
• Index: Business

E-Logistics serves as the nerve system for the whole supply chain and enables smooth information flow within and between organizations. This new and updated edition provides the latest and most comprehensive coverage on digitalization in logistics and supply chain. It covers all transport modes and the role of ICT in supporting an integrated freight and supply chain network. E-Logistics provides a cross-academic and industry perspective with leading academics and practitioners as contributing authors. A variety of successful e-logistics business approaches are discussed covering a range of commercial sectors and transport modes. Subsequent chapters address in depth support systems for B2C and B2B e-commerce and e-fulfilment, warehouse management, RFID, electronic marketplaces, global supply network visibility and service chain automation. Industry case studies are used to support the discussion. The new edition also covers emerging technologies such as AI, machine learning and autonomous vehicles, Internet of Things, Robotics, drone and last mile deliveries.

08

Trade and transport electronic single windows

TAKIS KATSOULAKOS, ZISIS PALASKAS AND YANNIS ZORGIOS

Introduction

In international trade and transport, over the years, the related authorities have established extensive regulatory reporting requirements which are authority and country specific, with little coordination amongst each other at the national, European or international level. As a result, traders and transport operators are often faced with a complex set of duplicative and redundant reporting requirements from authorities.

Compliance is a complex task, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while the related costs are generally high; this problem is more acute under the requirements for advanced trade and transport notifications for security purposes, such as the European multi-layered risk-based approach regarding customs security.¹ Contemporary compliance support applications often fail to rationalize the underlying regulations and the compliance processes. These factors hinder trade development, with implications for economic growth.

To address the issues outlined above, a number of initiatives, especially in the European Union, have emerged centring around the concept of a single point interaction between businesses and authorities, commonly termed the ‘single window’ (SW), with implementations at the national level (NSWs) or at the international level.

As early as the 1960s customs authorities first began to automate their functions using automated systems for customs data. Port community systems first appearing in the 1990s, offered a single interface between a trading community and a customs/port authority, however with limited functionalities. NSW solutions for trade facilitation started being developed for customs in the early 2000s, and until today, transport single windows have been mainly used in the maritime sector. A renewed impetus for development of maritime single windows (MSW) has come from European Union (EU) Directive 2010/65/EU on reporting formalities for ships arriving in and/or departing from ports of the European member states, commonly known as the Reporting Formalities Directive (RFD) or the ‘FAL Directive’, mandating the 14 member states listed in the Annex of the RFD to establish a NSW and to enable the fulfilment of ship reporting formalities in electronic format and their transmission via a single window as of 1 June 2015.²

From the business point of view, single windows can be seen as key components in the emerging trade and transport connectivity infrastructures, relying at the EU level on the e-freight³ and e-maritime⁴ capabilities. Compliance solutions are becoming an intrinsic component of integrated and ‘smart’ international supply chains, which in turn rely on new interoperability support standards and associated connectivity technologies.

The culmination of concepts and practices from a broad range of initiatives associated with trade and transport authorities and business driven solutions for single windows, indicates that there is convergence of principles and methods. Through the eMS Working Group,⁵ the specifications and services for the electronic data exchange and single windows for EU maritime transport have led to the National Single Windows Guidelines,⁶ which were established to support member states in the development of their NSW. However, in the period 2015 to 2019 the implementation process did not achieve the overall reporting formalities directive objectives and as a result on 8 February 2019 a decision was reached on harmonizing ship reporting in Europe (Regulation for a European Maritime Single Window Environment).⁷ The main aim of this Regulation is to lay down harmonized rules for the provision of the information that is required for port calls, in particular by ensuring that the same data sets can be reported to each maritime national single window in the same way. This Regulation also aims to facilitate the transmission of information between declarants, relevant authorities and the providers of port services in the port of call, and other EU member states.

In the following sections the key drivers of single windows are addressed in the following domains:

• customs and coordinated border management: covering import, export, and transit-related regulations and security management;
• maritime authorities: covering ship formalities and vessel traffic monitoring regulations for port clearance and safety/emergency management;
• businesses: covering the efficient use of single windows.

A section on the lessons learned in the period 2015 to 2019 and ways forward concludes this chapter.

Trade facilitation single windows

The single window concept

The concept of single windows for trade was introduced by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in order to enhance the efficient exchange of information between trade facilitators and governments, with UNECE Recommendation No. 33, which provided the first definition of a SW, describing it as a:

facility that allows parties involved in trade and transport to lodge standardized information and documents with a single-entry point to fulfil all import, export, and transit-related regulatory requirements. If information is electronic then individual data elements need only be submitted once.⁸

Many international organizations, including UNECE, UNCTAD, UN/CEFACT, WCO, IMO, ICAO and ICC provide advice on the SW concepts to promote interoperability in the supply chain. In practical terms, the single window aims to expedite and simplify information flows between trade and government, and bring meaningful gains to all parties involved in cross-border trade. When cross-border trade is subject to security concerns, or to special rules as is the case of the European Union, the consequences need to be built in the SW architecture, particularly the requirements for information exchange between SWs.

UNECE recommends that the single window should be managed centrally by a lead agency, enabling the appropriate governmental authorities and agencies to receive or have access to the information relevant for their purpose and coordinate their controls. Today, the progress made in technologies facilitating distributed systems ...