OTM5

OTM5 defines a common data structure for transport so that carriers, shippers, forwarders and software platforms can exchange information without building a bespoke point-to-point integration for every partner. The model and its documentation are openly available, so any company can implement it, and data stays portable between systems.

The standard is maintained in the Netherlands by SUTC (Stichting Uniforme Transportcode) with input from shippers, carriers and software vendors. It is built around a small set of entities: consignments and the goods in them, actions such as loading and unloading at a location within a time window, trips that group those actions for a vehicle, plus actors, locations, vehicles, documents and events. Data is exchanged as JSON over REST APIs, which makes OTM5 much easier to implement than traditional EDI.

Example: a shipper sends a consignment of 10 pallets with two actions — load in Venlo between 08:00 and 10:00, unload in Hamburg the next morning — plus the goods' dimensions and weight. The carrier's TMS reads it without custom mapping, plans it onto a trip and sends back OTM5 events as the truck arrives, loads and delivers. The shipper's system processes those events with the same model it used to send the order.

Because the entities mirror how transport actually works, a TMS built on OTM5 needs little translation between its internal model and what partners send. That shortens integration projects and makes it easier to add or replace systems later.

Transportial structures orders, consignments, actions and locations on OTM5. Every mapping in the integration framework targets the OTM5 model, the REST API exposes OTM5-structured data, and the free OTM5 converter turns CSV or JSON order data into OTM5 transport orders.