IN Brief:
- The Open Logistics Foundation is recruiting organisations to test an open, vendor-neutral time-slot management API.
- Transporeon and TradeLink have implemented the interface ahead of proposed cross-company pilots.
- Applications opened on 15 October for six weeks, with approximately three-month pilots planned from early 2027.
The Open Logistics Foundation is seeking logistics businesses to test a vendor-neutral interface for exchanging loading-bay appointment information between transport, warehouse and time-slot systems. The application period opened on 15 October and is scheduled to run for six weeks. The foundation expects the first pilots to start in early 2027, moving an existing open-source software project towards the practical handling of arrivals, bookings and changes across different organisations.
At a distribution centre, dock capacity is scheduled around the trucks expected to arrive and the labour and handling equipment available to serve them. Road delays or changes to a carrier’s collection route can disrupt those plans even when both sides use digital booking software. Incompatible appointment platforms then require staff to relay amendments by email, telephone or separate entries in each system. The foundation identifies these fragmented exchanges as a source of waiting, missed appointments and unnecessary coordination work, although it has not supplied a measured baseline for the proposed pilots.
The foundation’s application programming interface, or API, sets out a common way for transport management, time slot management and warehouse management systems to exchange booking information. An interface specification defines how software applications communicate; it is not itself a warehouse scheduling platform. Systems using the agreed exchange can interpret compatible information without a separately developed connection for each trading partner, while keeping their own functions and commercial rules. The project aims to test that approach with transport and warehouse operators using different software suppliers.
Transporeon and TradeLink have already implemented the open interface, providing a basis for the first testing scenarios. Their involvement does not establish that a universal industry standard is in operational use: the announced pilots are intended to test how the specification behaves across different organisational and technical arrangements. The work sits within the foundation’s Track & Trace working group, with representatives from the two businesses leading the time slot management project.
The invitation is open to shippers, freight forwarders, carriers, warehouse and yard operators, and suppliers of relevant management software. Initial scenarios may involve one carrier exchanging appointment information with a booking platform, while larger trials could connect several businesses and systems across a transport chain. The different configurations are intended to show how booking requests, changes and associated transport information pass between organisations. The foundation has not named the companies selected for pilots or said that multi-party working deployments have already been completed.
Dock procedures differ between facilities. Some sites reserve fixed appointment intervals, while others allocate handling time according to the load, the vehicle or the receiving equipment available. A carrier may need to amend an existing appointment after a disruption, and each connected system has to identify which booking and change is being discussed. These are examples of the operational requirements that trials could expose, rather than verified functions or benchmark results already established by the available interface specification.
A common interface does not allocate warehouse labour, reserve a dock autonomously or determine which arriving truck receives priority. Each participating operator retains its own scheduling software and capacity decisions. The proposed benefit is the ability to pass agreed information between those environments with fewer bespoke connections. The announcement contains no measured reduction in truck dwell times or integration costs and does not establish that the interface has become mandatory or universally adopted across the industry.
Applicants will be able to contribute use cases and requirements to the working group and evaluate the interface with industry participants. The foundation says the pilot programme will run for around three months per trial, although exact dates depend on the organisations and scenarios selected. After the six-week invitation period, project members will assess applications and contact potential participants. That is a recruitment and testing schedule, rather than a confirmed industry-wide rollout date.
The specification is available through the foundation’s open-source repository, allowing developers to inspect the agreed interface before integrating it into their own software. Practical adoption will also require partners to agree how records are matched, which changes take precedence and how failed exchanges or conflicting bookings are handled. Trials can expose such exceptions while the participating sites continue to operate their existing appointment processes. Publication of code and completion of cross-company operational testing remain distinct milestones.
Warehouse automation often coordinates work after products enter a building, whereas loading-bay appointments govern vehicle arrivals and collections before goods cross the dock. The foundation’s programme addresses that boundary between transport and warehouse systems. Applications remain open for six weeks from 15 October 2026; selected pilots are planned for early 2027, with each expected to run for approximately three months. The next evidence of performance will come from those deployments, not from the current recruitment announcement.
