1.1 Throughout the supply chain and goods movement process, the question of “who” is involved is critically important. This stakeholder “who” question can be responded to at several levels:

• 1.1.1 Using a commonly understood term that indicates a class of entities such as seller, buyer, or carrier; or

• 1.1.2 Using a (unique) identifier to indicate one specific entity, for example, “E-Merchant.com” as the seller offering products through online means.

1.2 In this terminology standard, the focus is exclusively on commonly understood terms and definitions referred to in 1.1.1 and not those described in 1.1.2.

1.3 To be able to respond to the “who” question even more precisely, parties involved in the supply chains and goods movement process have developed and associated a vast array of attributes with a stakeholder entity (who). In general, other standards development organizations (SDOs) have already defined the terms associated with those attributes quite well and ASTM International will adopt and use those terms and definitions from other SDO sources.

1.4 Some terms included in this standard may not appear to be stakeholders related to the supply chain, but there are three flows to account for, namely: the goods, the data and information, and the financial flows that acknowledge stakeholders and which will lead itself to future planned standards to be developed.

1.5 This international standard was developed in accordance with internationally recognized principles on standardization established in the Decision on Principles for the Development of International Standards, Guides and Recommendations issued by the World Trade Organization Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Committee.

3.1 In this terminology, terms and definitions are described to help answer the “who” question that is asked throughout most, if not all, supply chain and goods movement process activities. People involved in those activities will use an abundance of terms and definitions associated with the “who” question, but all too often, these people do not check whether they use a specific term with the same meaning as their counterpart understands the term. In this terminology, the aim is to provide stakeholder terms and definitions that can be commonly used across a wide range of activities in the supply chain and goods movement process operations and be understood the same way by those using these terms.

3.1.1 The document contains a substantial number of terms and definitions. Nevertheless, there are many times more terms for stakeholders than are in this document. The reasoning for including terms in this document runs as follows:

3.1.1.1 All supply chains and transport and logistics networks have to manage three different but interrelated flows simultaneously to be able to continue to operate over time. These are:

• Physical goods and cargo flows
• Financial flows
• Data and information flows

3.1.1.2 The stakeholders involved in any of these three flows need to communicate among each other to be able to coordinate their activities. Committee F49 deals with digital information in supply chains and the goods movement process and as such mostly with the third flow. Therefore, this document will include terms and definitions related to those stakeholders that are necessary to include in the description of the digital data and information flows. Digital data and information are increasingly integrated into the other two flows driven by both regulatory obligations and customer demand. As a result, some terms for stakeholders not yet covered in the current version of this document may be included in a next version.

3.2 In this terminology, a number of foundational stakeholder terms and concepts related to being able to start responding to the “who” question are first introduced. After that section, this terminology is split into sections that group related terms and concepts together.

3.3 The reason for this structure is that this ensures that a user of this terminology will see the related terms when searching for a specific term. In many instances, the user may then see the related terms and realize that one of those related terms is a better fit for the purposes that the user had in mind when starting the search in this terminology.

3.4 Structure for Grouping Terms and Definitions:

3.4.1 There are many terms in use for the various stakeholders active in supply chains. Supply chains themselves include a multitude of domains and areas. Specific terms may be used in a particular domain or area. Some of the terms are foundational and must be used as semantic anchors for the other terms described in this document. These foundational terms and definitions are described first.

3.4.2 The second main grouping separates terms that apply to a party directly from terms that apply for the role a party may play in a specific context. That context is often with respect to a transaction, for example:

• seller and buyer involved in purchase/sales order
• logistic service provider and logistic service buyer on a logistic services contract
• consignor and consignee of a transport order
• insurer and policy holder on an insurance contract
• etcetera

3.4.3 These two main groups may be further subdivided. Each subdivision may itself be subdivided again. This document will re-use, where feasible, categorization schemes that have been defined already; among them, the categorization described in ARKTRANS “Intermodal ITS framework architecture” (see 2.5). As the name ARKTRANS suggests, that framework is focused on the transportation domain. Therefore, frameworks from other authoritative sources will also be used to implement the categorization structures in this document.

3.4.4 This standard also implements the UN/CEFACT separation of the Trade and Transport domains. This separation has proven to be a very effective way to be able to capture and describe terms and definitions for what UN/CEFACT calls the Core Component Library (CCL). In turn, the CCL is the foundation upon which UN/CEFACT has developed its Reference Data Models (RDM): Buy-Ship-Pay (BSP RDM), Supply Chain Management (SCM RDM) and Multi-Modal Transport (MMT RDM). The BSP is the overarching model with the other two elaborating on parts of the BSP whilst focusing on their respective area (SCM on Trade domain versus MMT on Transport domain).

3.4.5 These reference data models are (among) the most widely used in supply chains and transport and logistics. Notwithstanding that those RDM and the CCL are very large models; they do not and cannot cover all terms used in these environments. Furthermore, due to the size of those standards, it has become challenging to easily find a term and definition that fits the business requirements for which one is looking for solutions based on global standards.

3.4.6 This standard aims to make it easy to find the needed term by grouping related terms and to keep the number of terms (per category) limited. Additionally, this standard holds an index for all terms defined in it. This should allow a user of this standard to quickly find the definition (and discussion) they are looking for.

3.5 Why is the distinction between party and role important?:

3.5.1 The network of stakeholders involved in a particular supply chain may consist of large numbers of stakeholders as well as a wide variety of kinds of stakeholders. This document lists many of them. See Fig. 1.

3.5.2 The stakeholders in the various parts of the supply chain (geographically or in terms of stage in the process) may organize themselves in business processes that achieve the goals of that supply chain. Within these business processes, a specific party may assume any number of different roles. For instance, a freight forwarder will take on the role of logistic services seller when engaging with a beneficial cargo owner (BCO) and then he will take on the role of logistic services buyer when engaging with carriers to arrange the physical carriage of the goods that the BCO wants to be transported.

3.5.3 To ensure that the description of the overall stakeholder network and their interaction is as generic, unambiguous, and easy-to-understand as feasible, several standards developed by various SDOs have described the overall network and interactions among the stakeholders’ using terms for roles.

3.5.4 A particular group of stakeholders active in a specific part of the network can identify which of the roles in the generic process description each of them plays within their operating environment. They may then document for that stakeholder group also which party is performing which roles. They may also create a business process description for themselves that includes the specific stakeholder identifications for each of the roles relevant in their operating environment.

3.5.5 This way, a generic business process description using role-terms in a particular standard (guide or practice) can be applied consistently across as large a stakeholder network as necessary.