Indian Ports Community System

Introduction:

Indian Port Association has decided to establish a centralized/uniform Port Community

System covering all its major ports, as a part of its collective, collaborative and co-
operative approach to EDI implementation, for the benefit of all the members of the Indian
Port Community. The proposed system will link through the internet all members of the
Port Community including Exporters, Importers, Custom House Agents, Shipping lines,
Shipping Agents, Stevedores, Transport operators, Banks, Ports, Terminal Operators,
Customs, and Other organizations / companies in the maritime logistics chain. The
proposed system will facilitate exchange of vital information needed by each member from
other members of the community to perform their functions effectively and to improve the
overall efficiency of maritime trade and transportation cycle.

International Scenario:

In many ports and regions across the globe, Port Community Systems have evolved over
a period of time and have proved that significant gains could be made by sharing data with
the Port Community. Some of the port communities have adopted message switching i.e.
enabling the exchange of standardized EDI messages from one partner to the other(s)
through a centralized, intelligent message switching facility. But the most successful ones
have adopted both message switching and maintaining a central database facility
(repository of information) containing transportation information from multiple sources
which is accessible through a secure and personalized web browser by everyone who
needs to support or to access information. It is seen from their experiences that many of
the community systems have revolved around either Customs or Ports as the nodal
agency or hub. All other players of the community have aligned their systems to suit these
two main players. In some places, these hubs have become separate neutral entities of
their own, sustaining themselves on revenues earned through subscriptions and
transaction charges. As the technology progressed and e-commerce became a global
business enabler, these systems are being upgraded to provide for the members to
transact their business, avail services and track their status easily and quickly in a single
and integrated platform.

Approach for implementation:

In order to improve the reliability and minimize the time to implement such a complex
system covering many agencies, it is proposed to draw on the experience of similar Port
Communities already established and stabilized globally. A team of IT export will study the
requirements of Indian Port Communities, identify a well proven system which can be
customized to suit the requirements, conduct a Pilot Implementation in Mumbai – JN Port
Communities and then replicate the same in all the Indian Port Communities.

Need for the project:

To maintain the competitiveness of the Indian exporters in the global market, the GOI is
taking a number of trade facilitation initiatives. One of them is EDI, to enable inter
organizational exchange of data.

Many companies have significantly changed the way they do business by implementing
ERP & SCM models and expect others in the supply chain to match their speed and
accuracy.

Exporters / importers are placing higher demands on the entire supply chain to maintain
their competitiveness in the global market.

Leading carriers, consolidators, freight forwarders, and agents around the globe are
beginning to introduce electronic commerce to serve their customers better. These
companies recognize that global visibility is critical to customers and to the success of
their supply chain logistics.

All these changes require the links in the supply chain to provide on line information,
facility for instant booking of facilities, faster booking confirmations, frequent updates on
status, alerts on delays and facility for quick and secure way of making payment.

In the Indian Port Community, though some members of the community have
computerized their internal operations, it is difficult for them to transfer data electronically
to all their trading partners. Therefore, exchanging data, getting status updates from
trading partners or transacting business with other members of the community take place
manually resulting in re-entry of data into their internal systems at the cost of speed and
accuracy affecting their service levels to their customers. As the dominant players of the
community (Customs, Ports, Banks etc.) begin to adopt electronic exchange of data and e-
commerce practices, other members of the community are forced to comply. They may
reach a stage where they may have to maintain links with many agencies for doing their
business.

The availability of broadband internet connection at affordable costs in many major cities
of the county has provided accessibility and uniform interface to all the members.

Hence, integrating all activities across maritime transport chain (from cargo origin to
destination) electronically into a common Port Community System, which meets all the
requirements of stakeholders, is current, consistent and easily accessible through the
internet is the need of the hour.

• Benefits:
This centralized web based Port Community System is expected to give the
following benefits to the stakeholders:

It will :

· Be a single source, integrated and standardized platform for meeting the

requirements
of all members of community
· Function as an e-commerce platform for the members of the community.
· Provide adequate, accurate and timely information
· Improve the response time of stakeholders to their customers
· Improve track and trace efficiency
· Provide shipment/ service visibility
· Generate alerts about delays or problems
 · Enable moving towards similar procedures across all communities
· Provide for opportunities for re-engineering, adopting best practices
· Be easily accessible and secure
· Be easy to learn, operate and support;

Objectives
The first and the most critical step would be identification of the requirements of
all stakeholders correctly and precisely. Hence, this web portal is hosted with the
objectives of

reaching out to all stakeholders,

giving them an initial overview and status & updates of the project,

collecting their feed back,

finding out how it can be made more useful to the members of the Port
Communities and

fine tune the requirements accordingly.

To provide common forum to all stakeholders for sharing the views.

Kindly go through the site and give your valued feed back.

Your valuable feed backs are welcome on the site

• ICD
Rail Connectivity - Phase - I

Doubling of existing Rail track from Port to Panvel is under consideration by Railways with estimated cost of Rs.600 millions.
Commencement: 2003-04 & completion by 2005-06.

Tughlakabad (Delhi) New Delhi

Jodhpur Kakinada
Moradabad Sabarmati(Ahmedabad)
Belanganj(Agra) Vadodara
Kanpur New Mulund (Mumbai)
Dhandari Kalan (Ludhiana) Amingaon
Jaipur Dronagiri Node
Whitefield (Bangalore) Chinchwad (Pune)
Coimbatore Amingaon (Guwahati)
Tondiarpet(Chennai) Shalimar(Kolkata)
Madurai Balasore
Sanathnagar (Hyderabad) Jamshedpur
Guntur Chirala Nagpur
Anarpati Daulatabad (Aurangabad)
Cochin Bhusawal
Malanpur (Gwalior) Pithampur
Vizag Kandla
Jodhpur Moradabad (U.P.)
Paradip Tuticorin
Container Corporation of India Ltd. (CONCOR), was incorporated in March 1988
under the Companies Act, and commenced operation from November 1989 taking
over the existing network of 7 ICDs from the Indian Railways.

From its humble beginning, it is now an undisputed market leader having the largest
network of 59 ICDs/CFSs in India. In addition to providing inland transport by rail for
containers, it has also expanded to cover management of Ports, air cargo complexes
and establishing cold-chain. It has and will continue to play the role of promoting
containerization of India by virtue of its modern rail wagon fleet, customer friendly
commercial practices and extensively used Information Technology. The company
developed multimodal logistics support for India’s International and Domestic
containerization and trade. Though rail is the main stay of our transportation plan,
road services and also provided to cater to the need of door-to-door services,
whether in the International or Domestic business.

CONCOR is committed to providing responsive, cost effective, efficient and reliable

logistics solution to its customers. It strives to be the first choice for its customers.
CONCOR is a customer focused, performance driven, result oriented organization,
focused on providing value for money to its customers.

Handling Equipment

CONCOR has generally followed a

policy of organizing specialized
cargo/container handling services
by deployment of state-of-the-art
equipment on contractual basis.
In addition, at ICD Tughlakabad,
in Delhi, which is the company's
flagship terminal, we also own,
operate and maintain the most
modern and sophisticated
handling equipments such as a
Rail Mounted Gantry (RMG) ,
Rubber Tyre Gantries (RTGs), and
Loaded and Empty handling Reach Stackers.

Wagons

After starting operations with make-shift container wagons that were provided by
the Indian Railways, CONCOR started acquiring state-of-the-art high speed
container flats (BLC wagons), capable of running at 100 kmph. Since last 9 years.
These have been progressively introduced on major container circuits in the last
three years, as a result of which transit times have reduced and service quality has
shown considerable improvement. 7200 such wagons are already deployed, and
CONCOR plans to add to that fleet every year to cater to the growth in business as
well as to replace outworn rolling stock. CONCOR has also purchased some 7200
container flat wagons from the Indian Railways, which have been since upgraded
and retrofitted to also provide improved service quality and better transit times
Northern Region
Tughlakabad(Delhi), Panipat, Moradabad, ICD DDL (Ludhiana), Ballabgarh,
Jaipur, Jodhpur, Rewari, DCT/TKD, Kharia Khangar, Gotan, DCT Phillaur,
Moga, Gurgaon (Planned), Sonepat, Dhappar, Surnasi (Under
Construction), Khemli (Planned)

Western Region
New Mulund(Mumbai), Mulund (Mumbai), Pithampur (Indore), Miraj,
Chinchwad (Pune), Dronagiri Node(Navi Mumbai), Turbhe / DOM (Navi
Mumbai), Ratlam

Eastern Region
Amingaon (Guwahati), Shalimar (Kolkata), Majerhat (CTKR), Kolkata Port
(Kolkata), Jamshedpur, Haldia, Fatuha (Patna), Balasore

Southern Region
Whitefield (Bangalore), Irugur , Tondiarpet(Chennai), Madurai, Harbour of
Chennai (HOM), Cochin (CHTS), Milavittan(Tuticorin), Salem Market/DOM,
Tiruppur

Central Region
Nagpur / Daulatabad (Aurangabad) / Bhusawal/ Raipur / Mandideep

South Central Region

Sanatnagar(Hyderabad), Guntur, Visakhapatnam, Desur

North Western Region

ICD Sabarmati (Ahmedabad), Vadodara (Channi), Vadodara, Gandhidham,
DCT Khodiyar, Ankleshwar, Mundra, Pipavav

North Central Region

Dadri, Agra, Juhi Kanpur, Malanpur (Gwalior), Rawtha Road, Madhosingh
(under construction)