On June 21, 2016, as a preparation for the new CORE Large Scale Demonstrator that is to be launched soon, depending on the formal decision of EU project officer, Dutch Customs organized a workshop on the topic: The Core project - Building The Internet for Logistics. The workshop brought together partners from the CORE project including representatives from the authorities (Dutch Tax and Customs Administration, Belgium Customs, and UK Customs), technology providers (IBM, DESCARTES), ocean carriers (MAERSK), businesses (FloraHolland), national and European associations of shippers and freight forwarders (Dutch Shippers Association (EVO), European Shippers Council (ESC), European Freight Forwarders Association (CLECAT)), and universities and research institutes (TNO, TU Delft). Next to that representatives of external parties such as the Dutch Neutral Logistics Information Platform (NLIP) were also invited to attend. The workshop was hosted by the Rotterdam School of Management that offers the part-time executive master program Customs and Supply Chain Compliance.
The workshop started with a presentation of Frank Heijmann from Dutch Customs, who summarized the ideas behind the data pipeline as developed and piloted in earlier EU projects such as CASSANDRA. This was followed by an introduction of the CORE Innovation Agenda by Gerwin Zomer from TNO, highlighting the importance of convincing commercial business cases behind the data pipelines. Subsequently Henrik Jensen from MAERSK discussed the analysis and findings of red tape in Global Supply chains based on the PhD research of Thomas Janssen regarding import of roses from Kenya to the Netherlands. Prof. Yao-Hua Tan (TU Delft) discussed R&D findings from the FloraHolland air trade lane and redesign scenarios to demonstrate the potential of the data pipeline to address Coordinated Border Management challenges. The focus of the workshop then shifted to the Shipping Information Pipeline (SIP) that is currently being developed by MAERSK and IBM. Henrik Jensen from MEARSK presented the prototype of the SIP and discussed the global ambitions that MAERSK and IBM have with the SIP and key principles behind its development, in particular the openness to invite other key players such as other sea carriers and freight forwarders to develop SIP in a truly collaborative way. An update on the latest developments related to the Customs Dashboard developed by Intrasoft as part of the CORE project, as well as the CLARISSA dashboard that is currently being built and tested in Dutch Customs, developed by IBM, was presented by Rolf Nijenhuis of Dutch Customs, who is also a graduate of the executive master program Customs and Supply Chain Compliance. During the workshop it was discussed that other IT providers can also be connected to the SIP such as DESCARTES for piloting with the Business Dashboards and Intrasoft for piloting with the Customs Dashboards. The Business Dashboard will be piloted in the CORE FloraHolland demo. Dutch Customs is actively involved to pilot the Customs Dashboard linked to SIP. Discussions are on-going how Belgian Customs and UK Customs could also do piloting with the Customs Dashboard.
MAERSK and IBM are now up-scaling SIP to prepare it for processing of data of large number of containers in the Large Scale demo that is relevant for businesses to optimize their international supply chains and for Customs in the EU and other continents (US, Africa, China etc.). A work visit will be organised by MAERSK in August with US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to discuss the participation of US shippers and various Container Security Device (CSD) providers to pilot the data availability of CSDs via SIP and Business/Customs dashboards. Other workshops will be organised in September/October to involve shippers and Customs administration from various African countries.