Know which shipments need follow up before the day starts
Every morning Lilla checks your incoming shipments against Singapore's port data and tells each owner which deliveries are at risk.
Why we built this
If you import goods, someone on your team keeps a list of what is arriving: the shipment, the ship it is on, when it is expected and when the customer needs it. Every morning that person checks each ship on a port or carrier website, updates the list by hand, and decides whether to book the truck or warn the customer.
The check takes time, and on a busy morning it gets skipped. A ship that arrives late, or a delivery that is now too tight, is found out when the customer calls.
Lilla does that check for you. It reads your list, looks up each ship in the port's own data, and tells each owner which shipments need someone to act.
The example
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) publishes ship schedules and arrivals on OCEANS-X. We used it with a Google Sheet of eight import shipments, each on a real container ship that was due in Singapore. The customers, deadlines and the ETAs the team noted are made up for the demo.
The sheet has one row per shipment:
| Shipment | Customer | Vessel | ETA noted | Delivery deadline | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DEMO-0431 | Harbourline Furniture | EVER CONSIST | 19 Oct 11:00 | 23 Oct 12:00 | Priya |
| DEMO-0432 | Pasir Panjang Foods | WAN HAI 358 | 19 Oct 21:30 | 20 Oct 14:00 | Marcus |
| DEMO-0433 | Kallang Coffee Roasters | BANGKOK EXPRESS | 19 Oct 19:30 | 24 Oct 17:00 | Marcus |
| DEMO-0434 | Tampines Medical Supplies | EVER BURLY | 20 Oct 06:00 | 22 Oct 12:00 | Priya |
| DEMO-0435 | Jurong Auto Parts | YM TRUTH | 20 Oct 02:00 | 23 Oct 10:00 | Wei Ling |
| DEMO-0436 | Changi Electronics | CMA CGM VALENCIA | 20 Oct 10:00 | 21 Oct 09:00 | Wei Ling |
| DEMO-0437 | Bukit Timah Books | ONE HUMBER | 20 Oct 13:00 | 25 Oct 17:00 | Marcus |
| DEMO-0438 | Serangoon Home & Living | COSCO SAO PAULO | 20 Oct 16:00 | 23 Oct 12:00 | Priya |
The sheet also holds each ship's IMO number, the identifier MPA uses to look it up. All times are Singapore time.
What this looks like in use
Every morning at 6:00 Singapore time, Lilla runs this question:
Which shipments in the import roster need attention today? Check each vessel's arrival against MPA, show the change from the ETA we recorded, and flag a shipment if the delivery deadline is less than 48 hours after arrival, the arrival is more than two hours later than recorded, or there is no arrival record and no current schedule. Name the owner for each one.
For each shipment, Lilla checks whether the ship has already arrived or when it is now expected, compares that with the ETA in the sheet, and works out the hours left before the delivery deadline.
For the screenshot below we started the same scheduled check by hand at 03:38 Singapore time on 20 October.
Lilla flagged four of the eight shipments.
EVER CONSIST arrived at 16:00 on 19 October, five hours after the ETA in the sheet. YM TRUTH is now expected at 08:00 on 20 October instead of 02:00, six hours later. Both went to their owners as late arrivals.
WAN HAI 358 arrived on time at 21:55, but the delivery is due at 14:00 the next day, about 16 hours later. CMA CGM VALENCIA is on schedule for 10:00 with a deadline 23 hours after that. Neither ship is late, but both deliveries are tight enough that the owner should book the truck now.
The other four ships arrived or are expected within a few minutes of the sheet, with at least 54 hours to their deadlines.
The result is a list of the shipments to follow up, grouped by owner, before the team starts work.
Other sources
The same check works with any source that publishes data you depend on: a carrier's tracking, a supplier's price list or a bank's exchange rates. Lilla compares it with your own list and reports what changed.
How it works
The dashed boxes are the sources. Lilla only reads from them.
Access and checking
MPA makes this data available through an API with a key. You add the key to the agent once, and Lilla sends it only to MPA. Lilla reads the sheet and MPA's data and changes neither. Each arrival time in the answer names its source and when it was read, so anyone can check a line before acting on it.
For this demo we checked every arrival time and hour figure in the answer against direct calls to MPA.
If you want to see this with your own records and data sources, get in touch.
Contains information from MPA OCEANS-X Vessel Due to Arrive and Vessel Movements, accessed 20 October 2026, made available under the MPA API Terms of Service. Customers and shipments in this demo are fictional.