That familiar feeling
Jade's Quennell believes that terminal operating systems are becoming more and more similar
Terminal operating systems all look and feel fairly similar, says Dave Quennell at Jade.
"The semantics around specific window layout and functionality are becoming moot; they all have to do much the same thing because, after all, the ships are the same, the containers are the same and the basic mechanisms for handling them are identical the world over.
"This means - and we have direct experience with this - that a terminal planner, for example, will not have many difficulties learning another system when the end functionality is very similar. I compare this to swapping computer word processing packages - they all do the same thing but they each have their own idiosyncrasies."Mr Quennell believes that other than licence fees, the greatest direct expenses to consider in changing TOS are end-user training, followed by the existing data transfer between the systems.
"We recommend a comprehensive training plan is agreed before any implementation. This goes a long way to resolving concerns by users. Also, it's important to ask if the TOS is meeting the requirements of the entire organisation and not just specific elements of the company. For example, we have seen sites where ship planners are very happy with their system while gate, rail and yard operators are dismissive of the TOS because it serves the needs of ship planning with little regard to the other interchange areas in a terminal."
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