Category Archives: Technology

“The extraordinary crisis always leads to extraordinary opportunities,” says Amar More, CEO, Kale Logistics Solutions at CargoTalk’s third digital conclave. Taking about the role of technology in the time crisis, he says, “If we look at the attitude towards digitisation; technology has moved from nice to have thing to necessary evil to now a business driver. The role of technology is increasing in the industry; those who had the right technology could operate in those pandemic days.” “Paper is just not a piece, it means delays, environmental damage and in some places it means corruption and now it is a death threat because COVID-19 stays on paper for three to four days. India is world’s IT backbone and we should be leading the world rather than following the world,” he adds.

The third edition of CargoTalk digital conclave will begin today at 10 am till 12:15 pm. There will be two sessions each of one-hour duration, which will lay emphasis on re-engineering the future. Experts from air cargo and road logistics will share their views. Panelists for first session titled ‘Digitalisation: Building and Enabling Confidence’ (10am-11am) will be Saurabh Kumar, CEO, GMR Hyderabad Air Cargo, Amar More, Director, Kale Logistics Solutions and Keku Gazder, CEO, AAICLAS. For the second session, titled ‘The Road ahead – Driving to Success’ (11:15am-12:15pm), there will be Chander Agarwal, Managing Director, TCI Express, Aditya Shah, Executive Director, V-Trans India and Ashok Goyal, Managing Director, BLR Logistiks.

With people and transportation constantly flowing in and out of the warehouse property, it’s a constant hub of activity. It puts them at risk for many things, like a fire, or a flood, product damage, or employee safety. Among them, theft is a critical problem. Warehouses have commonly incorporated video cameras to help catch activity going on in and around the property. But in most cases, when loss is identified, the warehouse manager or security staff turn to the video security system to search for the right footage. The challenge is that there is an ocean of video footage, and sometimes none of it clearly tells what happened. This makes forensic search difficult and time-consuming. In short, conventional video monitoring systems cannot effectively help identify an intrusion event at the time it is happening and thus prevent at the very beginning. Accurate trespassing alarm Video monitoring with accurate trespassing alerts on the detection of a human intrusion event will be a great improvement. Today’s security products equipped with Prama Hikvision’s AcuSense technology automatically send out alerts when a human or a vehicle is detected. With an advanced deep learning algorithm, technology precisely distinguishes and categorizes objects into human, vehicle and other. Alarms triggered by the ‘other’ objects such as a beam of light, an animal, the movement of foliage, etc., are disregarded, leaving the true events which are associated with humans and vehicles for users and security personnel to focus and act. Additionally, related videos are automatically sorted by categories for easier search. Focused technology in action So in the warehouse setup, AcuSense cameras are installed to stay alert day and night. If an intruder enters an area of attention, …

“In order to streamline the logistics eco-system in the country, a National Logistics Efficiency and Advancement Predictability & Safety Act (NLEAPS) is under consideration,” informs, Pawan Agarwal, Special Secretary (Logistics), Ministry of Commerce & Industry at a webinar organized by the PHD Chambers of Commerce. Stressing on defining the various elements in the logistics sector, he says, “What the logistics sector is all about is not very clear to us as of now. The government is considering replacing the multimodal transportation of goods law with national logistics law to promote growth of the sector.” “The high logistics cost of country is impacting the competitiveness of domestic goods in the international market. India’s logistics sector is highly fragmented and the government aims to reduce the logistics cost from the present 14 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product to less than 10 per cent,” tells Agarwal. He continues, “During the times of COVID-19, there has been a disruption in the supply chain and movement of truck with many of the supplies diverting to the rail; making it a reliable and cost effective mode of transportation. In these indispensable times, we have realised the importance of essential services with their regular supply chains,” he adds. According to Agarwal, digitisation of logistics is the need of the hour which will increase the efficiency in movement of goods. He also informs that the government is working on creating digital platforms and mobiles apps for logistics such as warehouse information tracking and trading yard (WITTY), among others to mapping of warehouses. Agarwal believes that logistics is a sector that needs to realise the vision of ‘Aatma Nirbhar Bharat’.

Delhi International Airport (DIAL) in collaboration with Delhi Customs Brokers Association (DCBA) and operators of both the cargo terminals (Celebi and DCSC) has launched paperless e-Gate pass with QR coding at their cargo terminals. The e-Gate pass facility would be open to all stake holders effective July 1 as an optional service and it will be made compulsory from July 15. The e-Gate pass facility for import cargo delivery will not only help in ensuring social distancing by reducing human contact at the terminals, but will also expedite the process and save time. The airlines, consolidators or freight forwarders will now upload the scanned copy of Master Airway Bill/ House Airway Bill in the custodian system. The Bill of Entry (BoE) and Out of Charge (OoC) is being transmitted electronically by the Customs to the custodian system. With these details, the custom broker agent will submit the request for issuance of e-gate pass for the delivery of goods and will generate the QR code at his office itself after due verification by the cargo terminal operator, saving time and resources.

FarEye has announced partnership with Blue Yonder to drive seamless interoperability between legacy infrastructure and modern supply chain and logistics tools. The joint capabilities of both organisations will bring predictive and real-time visibility to supply chains across manufacturing, retail distribution, logistics, and ecommerce. The joint solution can be accessed through Blue Yonder’s LuminateTM Platform. The Luminate Platform combines rich internal and external data from across a customer’s digital supply chain assets to allow for smarter, more actionable Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) based business decisions. “Globally, approximately 30 per cent of spend on logistics to tackle inefficiencies is creating an opportunity to save US$ 1000 billion. Together, FarEye and Blue Yonder aim to capture this market with their joint offering, which will provide an exceptional customer experience in the last mile,” says Kushal Nahata, CEO, FarEye.

Holisol Logistics has launched PPC (production planning & control) and DAP (dispatch allocation planning) in order to extend its offering into the customers manufacturing supply chains. The company has been offering full-stack logistics systems like WMS, TMS, OCFS etc to digitalise customers’ supply chain. VERDIS, Holisol’s AI and ML system has added these two additional modules to assist the customer to optimise their production and dispatch planning by analysing demand, sales forecasts, production capacities, rules and planning constraints analysing up to 75m data points to give an output which has helped customers save several million and precious resources involved in the planning process. Rahul S Dogar, Co-Founder of Holisol Logistics, says, “With PPC and DAP modules, Holisol has ventured into the manufacturing segment of the supply chain and will continue to build an end-to-end value chain system to help customers digitalise and optimise their supply chains.”

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs (CBIC) has announced the first phase of ‘all-India roll out of faceless assessment’. With the objective of speedy clearance, transparency in decision making and ease of doing business, the board decided to implement the next generation reforms in the customs clearance process under ‘Turant’ customs. The Board has decided to begin faceless assessment in phases beginning with Customs stations which already have the experience of the pilot programs. Therefore, the first phase would begin from June 8, 2020 at Bengaluru and Chennai for items of imports primarily covered by Chapters 84 and 85 of the Customs Tariff Act, 1975. The phased rollout plan envisages that Faceless Assessment shall be the norm pan India by December 31, 2020.

DBS Bank India in partnership with TCIL has introduced the DBS RAPID (Real Time APIs by DBS) solution for truck drivers, thereby enabling them to receive payments instantly. Given the large volumes of transactions, and round-the-clock nature of the operations, the bank proposed setting up a UPI-based real-time payments solution which is available 24x7x365. With this solution, TCIL truck drivers receive an instant credit into their bank account, which they can then swipe at terminals or withdraw cash using ATMs. Through DBS Bank India’s custom API solution, TCIL will now be able to save 45 lakh hours annually. DBS RAPID (Real-time APIs by DBS) and UPI payments, provides a seamless integration with the company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The solution has been set up under the aegis of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

In its pursuit for innovation and pioneering efforts in the technological application tools, Skyways Group launched a web-based business venture sKart. S.L Sharma, Chairman, Skyways Group stressed on the importance to move proactively on the digital journey which has changed the logistics landscape. Skart is 100 per cent cloud-based logistics industry software which will enable every small, SME and even big-ticket company to procure best in industry services for courier and express shipments to expand their businesses at a place of their convenience. The software has ERP which enables its customers to generate labels, provide real-time information, manages records etc. It manages all databank of KYC, labels, MIS etc online which allows its customers to access them at any time.