Jan/Feb 2006

The first glimmerings of what could become a de facto standard for transport telematics in the UK have emerged in the form of a system called Skylark, which is believed to be set to go live in March.

Unlike other previous schemes of its kind, which have mostly been developed by suppliers, regulators, operator associations or third parties, this one has emerged from industry itself. Behind it are three leading manufacturers of fast-moving consumer goods - Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Masterfoods.

We understand the driving force behind the initiative is a desire on their part to have uniform visibility of track and trace information about goods and consignments, without regard to what haulier is handling the products or what telematics system each company might be using.

It seems that other user-companies will be able to join the scheme, which could therefore blossom gradually into an industry-wide standard.

 

There are two distinct elements to the initial scheme - the underlying standards for telematics and communication devices and management systems, and the infrastructure that will be used to host the inaugural system.

Under the initial scheme, all participants will feed consignment details into a centralised handling system built and hosted by Road Tech Computer Systems, which was appointed following competitive tender. This system will automatically mediate goods movements, using a proprietary third-party routing and scheduling engine, and will pass tracking information to users across the system via a Web portal in near-real time.

Many of the UK's leading logistics and transport operators have been briefed by Road Tech on the implications of the system, and a number are believed to be set to go live with it in March. We understand that up to 9,000 trailers and 3,000 tractor units could be active under the initial system - a number that could increase quickly, since a fourth major user is believed to be waiting in the wings, and others will be encouraged to join.

"Chinese walls" will separate each party's operations, although it is not hard to envisage a future time when such a system could be harnessed to offer inter-operability between participants' fleets.

The standards themselves are not unduly onerous. They are built round various key tenets - for instance, use of the unique IMEI number carried by every GSM device to identify it; GPRS for the communications; XML to format the data; and Web Services and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) to handle data transmission.

Further basic requirements are placed on the transport management system, while operational standards cover items such as geofences, frequency of position polling and so on.

Participants will be free to use any complying telematics equipment and any order processing and management system, so long as these can send and receive information in the required format.

We understand Road Tech played a big part in defining the underlying Skylark standards, but it is not clear if all future users will be expected to adopt the Road Tech operating platform. Most of the individual elements in the standard are known and published in their own right, and it seems likely that the complete specification will enter the public domain, and could start to be regarded as a minimum specification for future telematics systems, however they are implemented.

According to our information, the scheme only stipulates certain minimum capabilities for compliant on-board and host systems, and does not in any way limit them to these specifications. The expectation is that telematics and tracking system developers will continue to devise and incorporate their own additional features, even if they aspire to meet the standard.

The Skylark Web portal is password-protected, and at the moment there is no general user information to view online. Information was limited when m.logistics closed for press, but we hope to bring you further details in future issues.