Open Tank Format is the Industry Standard
for the Tank Container Business

MISSION

Our mission is to unify data exchange formats for all B2B (Business to Business) processes of the tank container industry.

Open Tank Format (OTF) is an open file format for data exchange related to the tank container industry. OTF is used by development-teams.

HISTORY

During development of a Value Added Network (VAN) initiative and subsequent customer pilots, the Lucrasoft ICT Group realised that vendor independent open formats were needed for various connected development parties associated with the tank container industry. There were also many gaps in existing classic data exchange formats, which prevented important business processes such as pre announcements for tank container service providers. Open Tank Format (OTF) is the result of efforts to resolve these issues.

COMMITTEE

The OTF committee aims to develop and sustain an internationally governed interoperable open standard for technical communication between Tank Container Industry, by means of definition, improvement, alignment and dissemination.

The committee has active participation from:

- Software Vendors
- Value Added Networks/EDI brokers (VANs)
- Lessors
- Operators
- Depots
- Inspection Providers
- Spare Parts Vendors
- OT (=Operational Technology) Systems Suppliers

We are looking for more representatives who bring value to the table!

What does it mean to be a committee member?
- Sign up through e-mail through info@opentankformat.org
- You can choose to have your logo shown on this website, which strengthens the format. A strong format accelerates decision-making for all partners involved.
- You receive latest updates by mail
- You can participate in an annual digital event for discussion on how to improve
- You can send change requests to info@opentankformat.org
- You can request to be contacted to further discuss specific changes to the syntax, additional formats and format content
- All incoming change requests will be curated by the owner of OTF

You can sign up through e-mail
info@opentankformat.org

OWNERSHIP & LICENSE

OTF is owned and copyrighted by Lucrasoft Solutions B.V. (known for their DEPOT Software and SYNDA brands). This commercial dependency ensures that OTF will continuously be updated and expanded according to market demands.

OTF is licensed under Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0)
It can be shared and used by anybody, but it is not allowed to publish a modified version of the standard.

SUPPORTED PROCESSES

CONTAINER DEPOT
- Redelivery (off-hire)
- Release (on-hire)
- Heating request
- Cleaning & Accompanied Cleaning request
- M&R Estimate (repair, quickrepair, modification, surveyor annotations & return authorizations)
- Inspection requests
- Transhipment status update

CONTAINER INSPECTION

- Container Inspection Report

OTHER
- Gate passthrough audit
- Heating audit
- Cleaning audit
- Equipment information
- Spare parts order information
- Product record
- Debtor record

CHANGES, UPDATES & ROADMAP

Change requests or other contributions can be sent to the board via e-mail info@opentankformat.org.
Please check back regularly for updates.

NEWS

- Improved formatting of definition files, sample files and add XSD files and source code samples (Github)
- Unified headers of all file types
- Sample data generator added

ROADMAP 2023

- Add deserialization example
- M&R to include picture urls and metadata
- Upgrade all non-core/other OTF (v1.3) files to OTF20

PRESS KIT

Free for use in public articles, etc.
Free for use to notify that a solution supports OTF.

Download here.

RELEASE DOCUMENTATION

RELEASE LOCATION
Releases can be downloaded from the GitHub repository.

RELEASE HISTORY
2023-02-22 - OTF20
2023-02-22 - OTF (v1.32)
2023-02-10 - OTF (v1.31)
2022-11-01 - OTF (v1.3)
2022-05-13 - OTF (v1.2)
2021-11-15 - OTF (v1.1)
2021-08-27 - OTF (v1.0)