Russian Railways, Russia’s Ministry of Transport and market participants establish digital service for seamless multimodal deliveries
At the Conference CIPR 2023, Russian Railways, the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation and market participants agreed to set up a digital service for seamless multimodal freight deliveries, according to the company.
The initiative was made as part of the strategic session Digital Innovations in Freight Logistics.
Russia’s Ministry of Transport supported the proposal put forward by Russian Railways, FESCO and the Digital Transport and Logistics Association to launch a pilot project for the electronic registration of multimodal transportation in the State Information System of Electronic Transportation Documents (SIS ETD).
This service will allow clients to order door-to-door cargo transportation at a one-stop shop and consolidate the capabilities of all participants on the transport logistics market.
During the first stage, in order to work out the links and connections between road transport and the railways, the Electronic Lading Bill (ETRAN) automated system of Russian Railways will be docked with the State Information System of Electronic Transportation Documents.
"We are continuing to work systematically on the introduction of electronic document management in all modes of transport," said Dmitry Bakanov, the Deputy Minister of Transport of Russia. "Starting with the automobile, in the near future we will begin to dock the SIS ETD with other modes of transport. The restructuring of logistics chains, the optimisation of existing, and the establishment of new traffic flows will be impossible without uniform standards for the information exchange of transportation documents and information cooperation. This will make it possible in the future to introduce a multimodal digital workflow based on the SIS ETD."
"When we talked with Russia’s Ministry of Transport about docking the Electronic Lading Bill (ETRAN) with the SIS ETD, we considered this project not as a technical task for docking two systems, but as a response to a business request that would offer a solution that can really affect the situation on the market," said Evgeny Charkin, Deputy Managing Director at Russian Railways. "The exchange of data between the SIS ETD, Information System ETD operators and Russian Railways’ systems will make it possible to implement electronic document management in multimodal freight transportation for participants along the chain, both from the railway transport side and from the road transport side. Based on the results of the pilot project, we will be able to resolve the technological, regulatory and methodological issues and move on to replicating the solution across the industry in 2024."
According to Charkin, projects of this kind not only reduce costs, but also take the information interaction of participants to a higher level.
"The Association came up with a proposal to launch another project based at the Vladivostok Commercial Sea Port," said Polina Davydova, who is the Director at the Digital Transport and Logistics Association. "It is ideal for experimenting with multimodal transportation: it is the only fully universal port in the Far East which has a range of advanced digital solutions. As part of the pilot project, the technological and organisational aspects of the transfer and execution of transportation documents when implementing multimodal transportation will be worked out. This is not an abstract initiative: we are meeting the needs of businesses that need not only to simplify their document flow, but also to fully digitalise their cooperation and reduce costs and delivery times. This pilot will be another stage in the development of the SIS ETD."
"Among Russian ports, the Vladivostok Commercial Sea Port, which is part of the FESCO Transport Group, is one of the leaders in terms of digitalisation and high-tech IT solution," said Svetlana Prusova, Director for International Cooperation and GR FESCO. "Our Group, like most companies in the transport industry, has high hopes that the introduction of uniform standards for the digital processing of transportation documents will improve the quality of multimodal services and significantly increase the speed of freight deliveries."
The Electronic Lading Bill (ETRAN) is an automated system for the preparation and execution of transportation documents for rail freight shipments by Russian Railways.
Today, ETRAN includes 55,500 users and 19,000 organisations. The system can draw up 5 million documents every month and has more than 100 types of documents in its system.
The State Information System of Electronic Transportation Documents (SIS ETD) was launched in 2022. The transfer of transport documents to digital formats began with the motor transport industry. The functionality of the system is constantly expanding in order to ensure seamless multimodal transportation in the future by replicating the SIS ETD across all modes of transport (rail, air, sea and river) and for all types of transportation: domestic within the Russian Federation, as well as international to ensure export, import and transit deliveries.
