No magic productivity pills

Stop searching for a ‘magic pill’ or revolutionary change to boost performance levels; focus instead on more systematic and predictable planning processes and the integration of those with people and technology for evolutionary gains.

That’s the view from Oscar Pernia, senior director strategy, product management at port software specialist Navis.

While he concedes that automation is “truly the future”, it has yet to fully meet market expectations from an operational perspective. There needs to be seamless integration of different software and full engagement from operations teams to have any chance of a successful automation go-live.

“The need for more systematic and predictable operational processes for planning and execution is clear, but by nature carriers and terminals need to deal with the ‘operational reality’ coming from planning dynamics and contingency management,” says Mr Pernia. “Improved collaboration will benefit all, but the first step must be to re-define processes and tools to enable carrier and terminals to take operational decisions together, jointly driving the trade-off between capacity, performance and cost.”

Here, he calls for better data quality and control on cargo information, integrated systems for real-time engagement, and better control on the assignment of resources.

“The integration of processes, people and technology will bring hidden opportunities and synergies for efficiency,” he tells Port Strategy. However, ports need to be aware of the long journey ahead and the need for ‘buy-in’ from key players on how technology can improve operational performance and cost.

Dealing with unknowns

Currently, the industry faces the challenges of unknown requirements for capacity, productivity, cost and business continuity. Clear end-to-end commitments from solution providers can help, but ultimately any solution needs to be practical and flexible to address these unknowns. Only then can ports work towards improved operational performance.

“Systems must be conceived as a catalyst for simplifying operations and equipment, technology and people must perform as a whole,” says Mr Pernia.
However, the biggest challenge is often dealing with change itself. Here, management practices and mindsets needs to evolve to improve how container terminals create and deliver performance.

“There’s also the need to remove the view of systems as ‘black boxes’ that are unfathomable to users. At Navis, we are running a high-level scheme to change our planning and control client, changing not only the technology behind it but also the way users interact with the system. We call this framework Terminal Monitoring. Users are able to analyse a large amount of operational data and dependencies before taking a decision.”

This wider framework delivers an overall view of the relevant information on operations; proactive pop-up information to trigger users’ attention when necessary; and deep dive capabilities for further analysis. This allows for effective and quick reactions to congestion, bottlenecks or exceptions, minimising the impact on performance.

It’s also important to focus on Business Intelligence to change mindsets, as data is of little use without smart operational analysis, says Mr Pernia. “We need to keep it simple: re-play operations in your brain and move fast. Once during a previous job at a terminal my chief executive asked me for one page with five meaningful KPIs to enable him and others to make better decisions and to understand the impact and correlation of those decisions. I really think that’s the real Business Intelligence we are aiming for in terminals.

“This is about moving mindsets beyond moving containers. We are late with the ‘next big thing’, so let’s focus on the ‘next operational thing’ and forget about the ‘big’. It’s all about terminal operations; there’s no magic pill here.”