The Future of Tech
Shaping the road ahead
The digitalisation and disruption that has transformed sectors like retail, travel and banking is finally beginning to reorder shipping and forwarding, attracting a swathe of freight-tech start-ups and digital competitors in recent years.
Metro Shipping continues to fund and develop proprietary solutions that will keep us at the forefront of our industry and embrace emerging technologies that will add direct value for our current and future customers.
The Metro MVT platform was conceived and launched 10 years ago to provide real-time shipment status updates, and end to end control, connecting supply chain participants on a neutral platform.
Today’s MVT uses tools like EDI and APIs to simplify the shipping function, by automating many processes in purchase order management, quotation & pricing, shipment booking, milestone visibility, exception management and document management.
The current UN/CEFACT standard for data exchange, EDIFACT, is over 30 years old. Metro’s IT experts are actively involved with the organisations that will develop the next generation of data exchange standards, including openshipping.org, whilst working on crucial UN/CEFACT projects such as Smart Containers, and were key technical partners in the EU funded CORE project.
Metro is actively supporting two blockchain projects to follow developments closely and track.
“Metro’s IT experts are actively involved with the organisations that will develop the next generation of data exchange standards,”
Robotic process automation is also a reality and something that allows us to be very lean despite moving huge volumes globally.
Programmable devices with internet connectivity will provide a wealth of opportunities in Industry 4.0, commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, where Metro is using data from sensors, geo-fencing and GPS to track client assets and monitor environmental conditions with pinpoint global accuracy.
The emerging commercial viability of this technology, the Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) will connect carriers, terminal operators, shippers, and forwarders in a container shipping Blockchain, while CargoX is deploying the first Blockchain Bill of lading.
In the future, we could expect to see profound developments in autonomous vehicles, including truck platooning, container shipping and barge operations.