How AI will enhance supply chain visibility in the shipping industry

All container terminals have great optimization potential. In a joint project, the enterprise AI company 2021.AI and the global IT platform Blockshipping join forces to develop AI models for the shipping industry, resulting in improved container efficiency, significant cost savings, and reduced energy consumption in container terminals.

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK | JUNE | 2019

Predicting import dwell time with AI

Container shipping companies operate with container buffers to ensure an adequate number of empty containers. The ability to predict how long import containers remain in the container terminals (import dwell time) is of great importance for the shipping companies’ capability to estimate the required number of container buffers. Therefore, Blockshipping, the company determined to transform the shipping industry with its global IT platform GSCP (Global Shared Container Platform), and 2021.AI enter into a technological partnership to develop an AI model predicting import dwell times. The AI-based Import Dwell Time model is the first in a series of AI models that aims to provide the industry stakeholders with AI-based end-to-end supply chain visibility, focusing specifically on improving container ETAs.

Combining Blockshipping’s deep industry experience with 2021.AI’s AI platform GRACE and data science expertise for developing advanced models, the IDP product will result in significant savings for container carriers by reducing empty container buffers in each country.

For container terminals with an annual volume of over 800,000TEU, the potential savings per terminal are approaching USD 1M p.a. through reduced yard shiftings in import stacks.

“The technological partnership we have entered into with 2021.AI enables us to provide a very strong value proposition to stakeholders in the shipping industry and BCOs in the global supply chain” says Peter Ludvigsen, CEO and founder at Blockshipping and continues: “In AI projects, it is important to move from the conceptual sandbox stages to AI model implementation and take it into production making sure that business benefits are realized. 2021.AI has an excellent track record and expertise in ensuring that business value is actually harvested.”

Through machine learning, patterns and contexts acquiring, consolidated experiences in the container flows embedded in vast amounts of historical data, the Import Dwell Time Prediction (IDP) will be able to forecast a container’s dwell time, as well as providing an estimate on how accurate the system’s prediction is.

“The partnership has been very successful because of Blockshipping’s clear commitment to the business problems at hand. We found a great match in combining the business perspective with our experience in taking AI into production on our AI Platform, GRACE. This means that we are not only developing a single model but building an interface for future scaling of AI models for terminal operators. Our partnership with Blockshipping is a great example of how AI can bring value by solving real business challenges”, says Rasmus Hauch, Head of Product Management at 2021.AI.

Leveraging AI to improve efficiency

Many ports and container terminals are working on plans to move towards the Port 4.0 model and are launching projects to leverage digitalization opportunities. In this model of the future, Ports 4.0 will broaden the terminal’s role by orchestrating both physical and information flows inside and outside terminals to enhance the terminal’s ecosystem efficiency broader and systemwide.

Entering into a partnership with 2021.AI and based on the GSCP-iPaaS messaging engine, Blockshipping is well positioned to help ports and container terminals move towards 4.0 by leveraging AI to analyze infrastructure data and information flows of container terminals, trucking companies, and other actors. Additionally, they will be able to identify bottlenecks which are otherwise very difficult to detect manually. Therefore, the IDP model is an important first step in a very strong partnership where additional AI-based products and services will add value to the maritime industry in the future.

About Blockshipping

Blockshipping A/S was founded in 2017 with the aim to launch a global IT platform called the Global Shared Container Platform (GSCP) which seeks to improve container efficiencies and introduce the sharing economy to the use of shipping containers in the shipping industry. The GSCP platform is an open platform based on a product roadmap which consists of four different cloud-based products and services:

1. AI Supply Chain Visibility: Import Dwell Time Prediction
2. Blockchain Container Asset Register and container condition value index
3. Global Container Control and Container Sharing System
4. EDI and integration Platform as a Service (GSCP-iPaaS)

About 2021.AI

2021.AI serves the growing need for applied AI. Our data science expertise combined with our GRACE AI Platform offers a true AI differentiator for clients around the world. With GRACE, Data Scientists can solve some of the most complex problems, and at the same time provide organizations with the most comprehensive data and AI governance for ethical, transparent, and trustworthy model development. 2021.AI is headquartered in Copenhagen with sales and R&D in several locations globally.

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