Page 1: Port 1.0
Page 2: Port 4.0
Page 3: Terminal Complex…ities
<p><b>Port 4.0 – Automation and Digitalization</b></p>
<p>In December of 2018, McKinsey & Company released a report entitled <i>“The future of automated ports.” The executive summary outlining the report’s premise remarked, “Successful automated ports show…operating expenses could fall by 25% to 55% and productivity could rise by 10% to 35%. And in the long run, these investments will lead the way toward a new paradigm—call it Port 4.0—the shift from asset operator to service orchestrator.” </i></p>
<p>In some respects, the McKinsey premise is misleading. From the very inception, the container terminal has always been about automation and particularly reducing labor – as ILA President Thomas “Teddy” Gleason [ILA President 1963-87] commented with rue in the 1970s, “The containers are digging our graves…”</p>
<p>In reality, automation means different things to different segments of the terminal business. According to a number of transportation studies less than 3% of the world’s container terminals are semi or fully automated. </p>
<figure class="rte-img-chosen" style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" src="https://www.ajot.com/images/uploads/article/6970-tons-carried.png"></figure>
<p>Up until very recently, container terminal innovation has largely been dedicated to building larger more efficient handling equipment to match the increasingly larger boxships. </p>
<p>The most visible manifestation is the ship-to-shore gantry crane. The new class of super post-panamax gantry cranes have an outreach of 22-25 containers across and can hoist two containers simultaneously. The shore side handling equipment is also being jumboized and container yards have expanded exponentially over the past two decades. </p>
<p>While jumboizing equipment is an integral part of the “economies of scale” doctrine driving the containership side of the business, it isn’t automation in the sense of other industries, like airline, steelmaking or auto manufacturers. </p>
<p>While vast strides in moving containers within the terminal yard have been made in the last twenty years, it is a remarkable, if somewhat unsettling, sight watching unmanned vehicles move ocean containers to their appointed positions within the endless canyons of stacked containers.</p>
<p>Still even this phase of automation has still largely remained within the terminal itself – a data hole within a digital supply chain - largely because of a lack of data standardization with the rest of the supply chain. </p>
<p>Sumitha Sampath, senior director of Product Strategy for Navis, the Oakland-based supplier of terminal operating systems (TOS) software, remarked in a white paper entitled <i>The New Era of Container Shipping</i> <i>Challenges and Opportunities, </i>“Container shipping lags behind other industries in terms of connectivity among operational processes and data standardization.”</p>
<p>Navis (part of Cargotec group) has aggressively addressed the interconnectivity issue for more than a decade but the rise of cloud computing has upped the pace of innovation. </p>
<p>The company’s N4 terminal operating system is a trend setter in its ability to not only address the traditional TOS workload but to collaborate with other third party software. </p>
<p>Recently, Navis announced a collaboration with XVELA, a company that supplies cloud applications for container shipping. The integration of Navis’ N4 TOS with XVELA’s cloud network offers a wider and more complete view of container movements to stakeholders – essentially digitally linking the container terminal with the supply chain. In May, Navis launched another move with a “strategic cooperation” agreement with Loginno, the Israeli builder of internet container sensors. </p>
<p>Loggino’s goal is to create a “Contopia” – Container Utopia – where every shipping container is connected via real-time to the IoT [Internet of Things]. In short, Loginno is endeavoring to make every ocean container a “smart box” with tracking visibility end-to-end throughout the supply chain – most importantly, including the container terminal.</p>
<p>Andy Barrons, chief strategy officer at Navis, at the time of the announcement said, <i>“Through our Navis </i><i>SMART</i> initiative and this new cooperation with <i>Loginno, we hope to open a new door to more real-time data analytics in ocean shipping and explore more use cases for applying intelligence to the container, and unlock Contopia.”</i></p>
<figure class="rte-img-chosen" style="text-align: center;"><i><img alt="Andy Barrons, chief strategy officer at Navis" src="https://www.ajot.com/images/uploads/article/697-Andy-Barrons.jpg"><figcaption>Andy Barrons, chief strategy officer at Navis</figcaption>
</i></figure>
