Leading by example

Effective planning for the receipt of inbound ocean cargo, requires accurate arrival dates, but with schedule reliability at all time lows, the effective management of imports has never been more challenging. Metro’s new ‘Vessel Tracking’ tool links directly with transceivers on board, to follow real-time progress and uses AI to detect changes and automatically correct expected arrival dates, so that plans can be updated. 

At Metro shipping, we move over 100,000 containers every year and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to solely rely on the arrival data the carriers are providing, we require additional levels of visibility that go way beyond the standard.
According to our systems, less than 20% of container vessels are arriving on time and some trade lanes have reliability of less than 2% on-time schedule reliability. 

The ability of vessels to hit their port berthing window impacts shippers that have goods or equipment tied up on the ocean voyage, with ripple impacts from delays all along the extended supply chain.

The Metro Technical Solutions team have been working closely with Windward, the Predictive Intelligence company, that apply AI to global maritime trade, to integrate their Ocean Freight Visibility solution with the Metro supply chain platform, MVT.

Utilising AI to get predictive ETA data is an important development. To see the impact of vessel behaviour, weather, port congestion all being evaluated is quite exciting for us and Windward’s data stacked up incredibly well, in terms of what we found in the predictive data.

The resulting MVT ‘Track Your Vessel’ module improves inbound planning efficiency, with automated data collection and analysis to provide real-time accurate ETA predictions, disruption risk predictions, reasons for delay, and location-based insights for inbound cargo. 

Effective planning for the receipt of inbound ocean cargo, is dependent on knowledge of the vessel’s actual arrival date and even with schedule reliability at all time lows, the automated updating of accurate vessel ETAs by the MVT ‘Track Your Vessel’ module supports the effective management of imports, customs processes and swift delivery to the importer.

In a forthcoming webinar, Metro’s technical solutions director, Simon George, will show how technology can turn transform import challenges into effective operations, that exceed customer expectations.

“We need to provide first-class digital solutions. This last year has been one of the worst in terms of predicting how your supply chain is going to perform. Anything that could’ve gone wrong, has gone wrong. As an example, not only is it costing up to 10x more to move freight, instead of 35 days shipments are taking 45 or 50 days. Technology can’t fix that. But it can help you make decisions within those constraints. You can make data-driven decisions.”

Simon, together with former Maersk executive, Lars Jensen and members of the Windward team will discuss how to turn formidable challenges, including supply chain disruption, into promising opportunities. 

The Windward webinar takes place on Thursday 17th March @ 11am. Click HERE to register for this event.

The MVT ‘Track Your Vessel’ module automatically follows all ships carrying containers with our cargo on the water. The module instantly detects an ETA change or an arrival at POD and automatically updates the MVT platform.

Our technical solutions team are constantly innovating and evolving the MVT platforms to ensure that, whatever the challenge, our customers’ products are in the right place, at the right time. 

For further information on our MVT platform and to discuss how we can enhance your supply chains, please get in touch with Eilliot Carlile or Simon George.