DOT Provides Software to Transfer Freight Data

This story appears in the Sept. 14 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Department of Transportation is distributing free software the agency said will help create a central Web portal through which shippers, carriers and third parties can automatically exchange data about freight movements.

Known as the EFM Package, the software can be set up as a company’s primary means of sharing data about freight movements, or it can be configured to run alongside software a company al-ready uses for that purpose,  DOT said.

The agency also said that EFM — short for Electronic Freight Management — provides a cheaper alternative to electronic data interchange, the de facto standard among businesses for swapping electronic documents from computer to computer.

“The estimate given by software professionals is that the cost to implement and maintain the EFM Web services software is one-half to one-third less than an

EDI environment,” said Nancy Singer, a spokeswoman for the Federal Highway Administration, one of several DOT sub-agencies participating in the EFM project.

DOT created EFM after determining “that the infor-mation transfer of a freight exchange is an area where im-provements in speed, accuracy and visibility could result in large rewards for the freight transportation industry.”

DOT is studying international and domestic supply chains in anticipation of a projected doubling of inbound freight through the primary U.S. gateway ports by 2020, compared with 1998 levels, the agency wrote in a white paper on the EFM program.

DOT is pitching the EFM Package as a good fit for any transportation company, but said EFM is particularly well-suited for small- and medium-size businesses that have not invested in EDI, as many of the largest shippers and carriers have already done.

Currently, EFM is not in wide commercial use. However, DOT has conducted several tests with commercial users and is mulling over ways to entice more businesses to use the software.

FHWA’s Singer said eight additional EFM tests are slated for 2010, but details are not yet available.

The founder of a company that provides EDI services to the trucking industry said the primary barrier to entry for DOT’s software is the prevalence of EDI, which has found widespread acceptance among shippers.

“EDI has been gaining steam since the early 1980s,” said Ron Edwards, chief executive officer of Intelek Technologies Corp., Norman, Okla. “It’s become nearly mandatory for most trucking companies, especially over the past 15 years.”

Ernie Betancourt, CEO of Innovative Computing Corp., based in Brentwood, Tenn., said any migration from EDI must be driven by shippers. Innovative provides the type of software that eventually decodes machine-based EDI messages into status alerts for human readers.

“The reason the carriers are stuck with EDI is because the shippers have not been willing to invest in changing their systems,” Betancourt said. “There are plenty of technologies to replace EDI, but the key is integration. EDI works and has survived because it is integrated into the operational software of the shippers, carriers and related parties.”

EFM uses Extensible Markup Language, or XML, in place of EDI, DOT said. Both EDI and XML are methods of encoding electronic messages so that many different computers can understand them.

Within trucking, EDI is the more established of the two technologies, Betancourt and Edwards told Transport Topics. The standard was developed before high-speed Internet access was common.

EDI documents can, and often are, delivered over the Web, or a third-party network known as a “value-added network.” Edwards’ company offers such a service.

EDI documents also can be pushed directly from a carrier’s computer to a shipper’s computer through a modem-to-modem connection.

The younger XML standard, developed with Web browsers specifically in mind, is intended to be used mainly over the internet, according to the World Wide Web Consortium, a standards organization for Web technologies.

EFM formats data using the XML standard. When a shipper, carrier or third-party logistics company requests data from EFM’s online portal, that data is encoded in XML before it is delivered, DOT said.

DOT’s tests of the EFM software have so far have focused on long, multimodal international supply chains.

In the most recent test, for example, a Kansas City company that sells tableware and décor imported from China installed EFM as its primary tool for swapping information with supply chain partners.

According to the results of the latest study, which were published in June, the importer estimated that improved incoming inventory receipt information through EFM helped reduce back orders by 30%. The company also estimated it can save 50% of the costs associated with its “10+2” customs filings by using EFM.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection requires a 10+2 filing, also called the importer security filing, to be sent to the agency no later than a full day before cargo bound for the United States is loaded into an ocean vessel at their port of origin.

Prior to the Kansas City study, Forward Air Corp., Greenville, Tenn., participated in a 2007 EFM test along with apparel retailer Limited Brands and ODW Logistics of Columbus, Ohio.

DOT has made the source code for EFM and supporting documents for software developers available online at www.efm.us.com.

The software is open-source and may be freely modified to operate cooperatively with any company’s existing software, DOT said.