This is a dictionary of commonly used terms and abbrevations at Simacan and on the Developer Portal.
The easiest way to search for a term is Ctrl+F (or Command+F on a mac), type the term you're searching for.
Also known in Dutch as "transporteur". A carrier is a company that moves goods from A to B using vehicles. Most shippers hire carriers to do the actual transportation work.
Our main product. The Control Tower is where customers see their planned trips and the actual and completed state of their trips, and where they can update trips and inform drivers or other parties when necessary.
See Control Tower.
Distribution Center. A location from which goods are distributed to stores or other locations. A single DC distributes goods to many different locations.
The action of dropping off a shipment at a stop. Our Control Tower trips used to have a hierarchy of trip -> stops -> drops but because that forced us to deal with "drops" that were actually pick-up actions, Control Tower drop entities have been changed to the more generic shipments.
Basically, an ETA for a vehicle that is currently driving to a stop is the current time plus the calculated travel time. When we calculate ETAs, we have to basic approaches: profile-based ETAs and actual data-based ETAs. Profile-based ETAs are calculated using historical statistics: the average travel time on each road segment along the route for that time of day. Actual data-based ETAs are calculated using the current state of the roads, taking into account delays caused by traffic jams and unexpected roadworks. Since actual data-based ETAs get less reliable the further in the future we try to predict, we use these mostly for current legs while we use profile-based ETAs for future legs of trips.
See Estimated Time of Arrival.
An FMS is used by carriers to keep track of their fleet of vehicles. They give us access to their FMS data so we can receive realisation data for their vehicles.
An official European categorisation of the "type" of road, given to each road segment. Includes things such as "freeway", "single carriage way", "roundabout" and "pedestrian zone".
See Form of Way.
An official European classification of roads by "importance". The most important roads are often highways, while lower class roads are provincial roads, city roads, and finally local access roads.
Given a postal address such as "Valutaboulevard 16, Amersfoort", convert this to a geographical location, with latitude and longtitude: "52.193770, 5.408867". We do this automatically but our geocoder doesn't know all addresses, so for some manual geocoding is required. This can be done by users in Masterdata.
A figure (such as a box or a circle) drawn around a location on the map. Once a geofence is drawn, we can track when a vehicle enters or exits it. This is important because we geocode locations as a single point, while in reality they may be large buildings with multiple access routes. Geofences for locations help our stop detection. On top of that, by calculating how long vehicles spend in certain geofences we can do things such as calculating their average waiting time, which we can use to improve our future predictions.
See Home Delivery.
A logistics operation aimed at delivering goods to people at home. These deliveries are often done in vans instead of trucks, and the delivery locations are new for every trip. For some of our customers we have both Home Delivery and Supply Chain operations, in which case both Simacan and the customer usually treats them as separate operations, each with their own Control Tower instance.
Intelligent VRIs. Internet-connected Traffic Lights that not only send their state (which lights are currently green etc.) to the internet but also can receive priority requests from authorized parties to give a certain direction a green first, e.g. for an emergency transport.
A part of a trip, the movement from one stop to the next. Legs are the sections of a trip for which we calculate routes.
A specific place or address that is relevant for a trip. Locations include DCs, stores, and delivery addresses. Locations need to be geocoded before they are used in trips. We have locations that are used many times (DCs and stores of our customers) and locations that are used only for a single trip (delivery addresses for Home Delivery customers)
A communication standard first invented by Simacan for transmitting trip-related data such as plannings, projections and realisations between APIs of different companies. OTM is now officially maintained by the "Stichting Uniforme Transport Code" (SUTC) but Simacan still plays a large role in the further development of the standard. The first public version of OTM was OTM 4. Recently (October 2019), a new major version, OTM 5 was released. More information on https://www.opentripmodel.org/
See Open Trip Model.
For us, trips usually start as a planning. A trip planning consists of a list of ordered stops which each may have shipments associated with them. The planning also contains planned times for which the vehicle should be at each stop. Customers generally use third-party planning software to generate these plannings. Some planning software vendors improve the accuracy of their planning by making use of our TD-matrix. We consider a trip that has not started yet to be in the planning state.
When a trip is started, we can look into the future and see if it will still arrive on time. We do this by calculating ETAs. This data forms a projection of how the trip will proceed.
Realisation is when a planned trip actually takes place. While a trip is on-going we receive realisation data from the tracking device on board the vehicle. This data consists of live updates of the vehicle's current location, which we then use to recalculate ETAs and do stop detection.
See shipper.
The actual route over the roads a vehicle takes to get from A to B. We calculate routes using Marathon routing. Using information on what type of vehicle a customer users, we predict which route they will take and base our ETA calculation on that. The routes we calculate are not sent to on-board devices, and drivers are free to take another route, in which case we recalculate based on their position.
See Supply Chain.
Simacan Control Tower.
Goods that are being moved from one stop to another in a trip. Depending on the customer, a shipment can be a small bag of groceries, or a large dolly full of goods or anything else. In the Control Tower, stops have one or more shipments associated with them, either as a pick-up or a drop-off action. In the Control Tower, we have a hierarchy of trip -> stops -> shipments.
We use the term "retailer" or in Dutch "verlader" to mean shipper. A shipper is a company that wants goods moved from A to B. They plan their logistics process using a TMS and then hire carriers to do the actual transportation, while they use the Control Tower to follow and manage the progress of their operation.
The term shipper is sometimes used in the UK as synonym for carrier. When talking to people in the UK, please make sure you use the same definition for these words.
A planned place and time where the vehicle stops. Stops exist between legs on a trip and are most commonly used to either pick up or drop off shipments. The first location of a trip, such as a DC where the vehicle is loaded, is considered a stop as well, even if this is where the trip actually starts.
A logistics operation aimed at supplying stores and other locations managed by the customer with goods. Supply Chain operations often start trips at DCs and have a set of locations that only change if the customer opens or closes stores. The other common kind of operation is Home Delivery.
Talking Traffic is a partnership doing research on smart traffic solutions such as vehicles communicating with traffic lights. When we talk about it, we usually talk about the Talking Traffic software chain run by Simacan. We provide Talking Traffic with information on the route ahead of connected vehicles, and also about connected traffic lights (iVRIs).
Transport Management System. A system often used by shippers to plan their logistiscs operation. We often get planning data from a shipper's TMS.
A device on board a vehicle that can be used to track the vehicle's location real-time. Some tracking devices are dedicated devices, which are often integrated with vehicle sensor data such as internal temperature. In other cases, drivers install an app on their cellphone which allows the cellphone to be used as a tracking device. For Simacan, it is important that we can couple a tracking device to a planned trip so realisation data goes to the right trip and we can calculate ETAs correctly.
The part of a truck that contains the engine. A tractor pulls trailers. For some trucks, the tracking device is in the tractor. For others, it is in the trailer (or both).
The part of a truck that contains the cargo. A trailer is pulled by a tractor. We consider both semi-trailers ("opleggers") and full trailers ("aanhangwagens") to be trailers. For some trucks, the tracking device is in the tractor. For others, it is in the trailer (or both).
The time it takes to travel from one stop to the next. We distinguish planned (see planning), projected (see projection) and realized (see realisation) travel times. For projected travel times, see also ETA.
A trip is the movement of a vehicle from stop to stop. Most trips we deal with consist of multiple legs and more than two stops. Trips can be in different states: planned (see planning), on-going and realised (see realisation).
A machine that transports goods. Most of the vehicles we follow are trucks (see tractor and trailer), and vans. Other types of vehicles are river barges and deep sea vessels. Since we need to be able to get live updates about vehicles, we require them to have tracking devices on board.
Verkeersregelinstallatie. Traffic Control Signals. We use the term VRI when referring to the whole set of traffic lights and the traffic light control mechanism at an intersection.