OrbitMI a global provider of maritime software and data solutions, announces its membership in the Supply Chain Optimization and Resilience Coalition or SCORe. OrbitMI is the first maritime technology company to join SCORe, which also boasts members such as The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the National Retail Federation and the Wabtec Corporation. SCORe’s goal is to improve supply chain visibility and increase the capacity of the physical supply chain infrastructure in the United States through the development and deployment of globally applicable, technology-neutral, consensus-based data standards and frameworks.

The challenge, as SCORe defines it, is the recent unprecedented level of supply chain congestion and inefficiency, which has made U.S. exports less competitive, supply chains and transportation systems less agile and resilient, and undermines U.S. national security and economic recovery. What’s needed is a new approach that recognizes the importance of our digital supply chain infrastructure. The need to standardize this digital infrastructure and enhance interoperability is critical to help provide greater supply chain transparency and improve resiliency.

“The growth of global container shipping exploded in the 1960s after public and private sector stakeholders came together through a consensus standards process to develop standardized container sizes,” Jeff Weiss, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington, DC and chief counsel to the SCORe Coalition, said in a release. “Our predecessors standardized the physical container to improve efficiency and throughput. Today we have reached a second pivot point, in which we have agreed to come together in a public-private partnership to standardize the exchange and use of digital information in the supply chain. In time, we believe this step will unleash a new wave of innovation that will radically improve supply chain efficiency, agility, and resilience.” “We are proud to be part of SCORe and its mission to help drive transparency in digital infrastructure,” notes Ali Riaz, CEO of OrbitMI.

“As we have seen in global shipping, there is an urgent need to develop data standards to unlock the value trapped in the myriad siloed systems that are littered throughout the supply chain. Our customers use the Orbit platform to increase productivity, drive profitability as well as reduce CO2 emissions. We hope that our membership in SCORe can help introduce new perspectives to alleviate the persistent challenges for multi-model transportation in an era of port and highway congestion.” “Having OrbitMI as a SCORe member gives us visibility into cutting edge innovations and technologies that can accelerate our efforts,” notes Weiss. Among other initiatives, SCORe intends to help increase the effective capacity, agility, and resilience of the U.S. supply chain by incentivizing the transparency and interoperability of the U.S. digital supply chain infrastructure. In doing so, SCORe will seek to coordinate its efforts with the federal initiative to create a National Freight Data Portal (“Portal”), which was called for by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in its Supply Chain Assessment of the Transportation Industrial Base: Freight and Logistics.