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.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

The OTF development team 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 development team is informed by active participants, such as:

- Software Vendors
- Value Added Networks/EDI brokers (VANs)
- Lessors
- Operators
- Depots
- Inspection Providers
- Spare Parts Vendors

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

What does it mean to be an active participant?
- 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

IN SCOPE
B2B I/O documents between parties in the tank container industry.

Please note: Drybox and tank containers have a lot of overlap, both in the technical domain, as well as business-wise. Therefore, the OTF file definitions are structured in an object oriented fashion to distinguish between the two domains and inherit where possible.


(TANK) CONTAINER DEPOT
- (Tank) Container Redelivery (off-hire)
- (Tank) Container Release (on-hire)
- (Tank) Container Depot Services Status Updates (arrival/gate In, available, departure/gate out)
- (Tank) Container M&R Estimate (repair, quickrepair, modification, surveyor annotations & return authorizations)

TANK CONTAINER DEPOT
- Tank Container Heating Request + Status Update
- Tank Container Heel Status Update
- Tank Container Cleaning & Accompanied Cleaning Request + Status Update
- Tank Container Inspection Request + Status Update
- Tank Container Transhipment Request + Status Update

CONTAINER INSPECTION

- Tank Container Inspection Report

OUT OF SCOPE

- Invoice datamodels (alternative: please refer to the UBL industry standard)
- Data Synchronization Models (alternative: products, container fleet) (please consider direct API calls with Swagger-documentation)
- Operational Technology (OT) interface datamodels (alternative: please consider direct API calls with Swagger-documentation)
- Transferring non-EDI files such as images and PDF files (alternative: please use the attachment URL elements in OTF to refer to external download locations, usually provided for download by the system of the data owner of those files)

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

- Added heel status update
- Added remark tags
- Added return status
- Added new Global Depot Container Order Status enum field
- Improved detail of M&R Estimate files
- Added (de-)serialization examples
- Attachments as URL's
- Supports both containers and tank containers
- Included fields for BIC facility codes

PRESS KIT

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

Download presskit here.

RELEASE DOCUMENTATION

RELEASE LOCATION
Releases can be downloaded from the GitHub repository.

LATEST STABLE RELEASES
2023-10-24 - OTF (v2.3.1)
2023-11-01 - OTF (v2.1.9)
2023-10-24 - OTF (v2.0.2)

DEPRECATED VERSIONS
2023-10-24 - OTF (v2.1.8)
2023-10-20 - OTF (v2.2.1)
2023-10-20 - OTF (v2.1.7)
2023-10-20 - OTF (v2.0.1)
2023-09-22 - OTF (v2.2)
2023-09-13 - OTF (v2.1.6)
2023-08-29 - OTF (v2.1.5)
2023-08-23 - OTF (v2.1)
2023-02-22 - OTF (v2.0)
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)