WHAT IS SAF?
SAF is a P2P Distributed Network of Virtual Offices (VO) bundled with a full suite of services, tools, and insights crafting your pathway through the automation life-cycle.
SAF (SEA FREIGHT AUTOMATION FRAMEWORK) is an open source initiative to create a standard for automation framework, which offers a broader cross industry spectrum shifting away from today’s current inefficient practices to automated machine control. When adopted by the enterprises it should not only drastically increase the level of automation and reduce IT cost but provide cross-platform interaction to all stakeholders invloved.
SAF STATE
Current State | SAF State |
| Human Control Supply Chain Processes, Manual Task Execution and Data Re-Entry. | Machine Control Supply Chain with process flow automation spanning over all supply chain participants with less dependency on human availability and efficiency. No data re-entry. |
| Large Monolithic Platforms. | Well defined granular functional services (applications), integrated when required with existing platforms. |
| Process "Silos". | Full integration between processes. |
| Incommensurable User Interfaces for online services and multiple sign-on. | Unified user interfaces for all online services, single sign-on. |
| No standard definitions for participant roles, engagement processes, messages and transactions. | Standard definitions for the participant roles, engagement processes, messages and transactions written in Proto 3 data definition language. |
| No Standard Application Programming Interface (APIs). | Standard APIs written in Proto 3, which describe data exchanged by the Virtual Offices |
| Not all participants have persistent online services on the Internet. | Online presence of all supply chain participants. |
SAF ENGAGEMENTS
Engagement is a process with single well-defined objective i.e. container is transported from port of loading to port of discharge, exporter obtains Customs Declaration, etc.
During the execution of SAF Engagements Virtual Offices (VOs) are exchanging predefined messages.
Participant can be individual or a Company which is taking part in the engagements.
Engagements and exchange messages are formally defined using Proto 3 Data Definition Language.
In an Engagement a Participant can have only two roles i.e. Requestor or Provider.
SAF VIRTUAL OFFICES (VOs)
VOs ensure a permanent presence for products and services ie 24x7x365 availability and active on the internet. VOs contain the database for the participants and has all transactions performed between the participants.
VOs can deployed either on premise or in the cloud and has 24/7 presence.
VOs facilitates the participant roles in the engagements.
Each VO belongs to a particular participant (Individual or Company).
The VO becomes the single and total automation solution covering all IT needs.
VOs can be accessed by users using Web Browser apps or mobile apps.
SAF CENTRAL REGISTRY
SAF Registry is a centralized internet service which facilitates the discovery VOs
All active SAF VOs are listed in the SAF Registry
SAF Registry communicates with the payment gateways to facilitate online payments
SAF Registry performs as Identity and Access Management Service (IAMS)
SAF API
The fragmentation of the software market is accelerating the demand for apps that perform instantaneously, are integrated, have the ability to move data freely in real time, and are user-friendly and easy to set up.
SAFCHAIN APIs can be integrated with your ecosystem to orchestrate events based workflows among cloud based apps and even on-premise apps.
New web and mobile applications can be developed faster by combining SAFCHAIN API resources with various applications, into a new mashup or composite application or a new an API can be made available for consumption.
Product leaders can simplify the consumption of their API, by offering pre-built integrations to SAFCHAIN APIs that can be made available to publishers, customers and partners. These pre-built connections provide a way for citizen integrators (end users) to consume APIs without writing to the API; instead they use packaged connectors to accomplish the API integration use case.
About us
SAFCHAIN also enables the option for organizations to expose their legacy software to SAF API and become part of the network. Since SAF is using open API (not proprietary) there are possibilities to extend the network over to their partners who are not part of any platform vendors.
BENEFITS OF SAF
Some of the benefits of joining SAF network include greater market penetration, fair pricing, greater volumes, global reach, wider and deeper services, brand visibility and more clients.