Operational Vessel Schedules standard

Today, partner carriers in a service do not uniformly and timely share their vessel schedules between them and with other operational stakeholders. This creates schedules' discrepancies between carriers and their operational partners, even for the same vessel or service. Currently, the process for piecing together schedule information can be manual and time-consuming. For terminal operators and other operational partners, getting clarity on vessel voyage information, such as scheduled arrival or departure, and routing changes, can be very challenging. This lack of transparency and discrepancies in data, cause unexpected service delays at port and inland that decrease supply chain reliability, hinder effective resource planning and ultimately disrupt business performance.

The DCSA Operational Vessel Schedule (OVS) standard enable the automatic sharing of vessel schedule data and exception-related information between carriers, operational partners (i.e., terminals), and their solution providers. Leveraging a common structure for schedules, defined data attributes, and an API, DCSA standards clarify which information is associated with a vessel at service, voyage, and port call levels and provide the means to exchange that information. With the inclusion of universal references in the standard, to be implemented by partner carriers over time, operational partners will no longer have to second guess which update correspond with which service, voyage, or port call. For all stakeholders, data uniformity and transparency create the essential foundation for digitalisation, more efficient operations, and data-driven analysis.