Automatic attraction

The use of automation at container ports and terminals is certainly an accepted method of improving operating productivity, primarily for larger container terminals. The key benefit offered by technology is the ability to offset labour and linked costs and a chance to more efficiently move containers to and from a ship, through the operational areas of a port, and through the supply chain.

The choice of whether to automate or not comes down to a number of criteria: cost of labour/workforce; terminal performance; terminal lay-out, size and design; environmental issues; fuel costs; and prestige.

But there is one common attraction of automation: consistency. Port operations specialist, Tony Davison, notes: “A fully-automated terminal will deliver the same operating results when working as opposed to potential differences likely to be incurred from a non-automated system through such items as crane driver training, capability and attitude.”

Clearly, the quality of supervision and experience of the workforce are also important factors that can influence a fully-manual operation, from the quay cranes through to the container yard and to gate-house activities. Automation can help to overcome some of the vagaries associated with human-intensive activities and attitudes.

Terminal concerns

The terminal itself is also a further consideration in the planning process, with the size and shape strongly impacting whether automation is even a possibility. A small terminal, perhaps handling less than 250,000 teu/annum is unlikely to see any benefits from investing in automation, unless it has significant market potential to attract and its future volumes growth will see it developing into a much larger facility that would benefit from an automated operation.

This helps to explain why the development of automation at terminals has tended to occur more at new and planned facilities rather than conversion of existing operations.

Geographic differences in the use of automation are also noted by Andrew Penfold, director at WSP-Parson Brinckerhoff, who notes that container terminal automation is well-established in some regions and still in its infancy elsewhere. “There is no doubt that the number of containers moving on a global basis is going to continue to increase, with the introduction of larger ships linking key regions such as Asia, Europe and North America. This is reflected in the development differences to date.”

Automating container handling can be done on the quay, through ship-to-shore, in the yard, or at the gate/gate-house, or at all three places.

The bottleneck in terms of ship service time used to be at the ship-to-shore quay cranes, but that bottleneck has shifted to the horizontal transport equipment responsible for moving containers between the quay and the container yard. Automating that part of the port process can certainly help to lessen the congestion.

Choice of units

Ports have a choice of solutions: automated shuttle carriers (AShCs) where the unit can decouple at any points as it has its own lifting and lowering capabilities; automated guided vehicles (AGV) – the conventional type of system equipment, as deployed at Hamburg’s CTA and in Rotterdam’s ECT facilities; lift-AGV – an AGV that can decouple its load with the use of a steel rack system at the yard; or C-AGV – an AGV system that utilises cassettes or steel platforms for transporting containers thus decoupling at all points in the terminal.

All come with their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, in terms of layout, AShCs can decouple at both the quay side and the yard side. However, they require much more space as they have to straddle the container and this leads to fewer transfer points from the transfer of the container from one piece of terminal equipment to another.

In terms of transfer point, there needs to be sufficiently enough to allow the ship-to-shore quay crane to perform operations without being hindered by the horizontal transport carriers not delivering or retrieving containers. The two most common locations for transfer points at the quay side operations are either between the legs or the back-reach area of the ship-to-shore quay crane. The location and type of horizontal equipment deployed to serve the ship-to-shore quay cranes will, therefore, influence productivity.

The functionality and manoeuvrability of the horizontal equipment also has an impact on productivity because either more or less units are required to maintain the set ship-to-shore quay crane productivity demanded by the terminal operator.

Consumption of fuel is fast becoming a factor that is included in the decision-making process for investment in automated equipment. Here, options are available to reduce consumption such as hybrid, battery, super or ultra-capacitors and inductive energy.

Additionally, automated systems are scalable and are not sensitive to the number of ship-to-shore quay cranes employed.

Pros and cons

There are other noteworthy features worth considering. For example, opting for AGVs requires more vehicles to sustain performance levels, primarily due to overall increased driving distances. The AGV system is better equipped to deal with larger distances since although more units are deployed the AGV spends more time driving but not at the detriment to cost productivity because it acts like a driving buffer. The AGV has to travel the length of the vessel in order to pick or dispatch containers and these large distances are common, though since AGVs are not able to decouple they often have higher waiting time to be loaded or unloaded with a container.

Cassette AGV and AShCs are very close in terms of performance capabilities. The driving strategy for AShCs causes a longer driving distance per box, however the unlinked operation at the quay crane of the AShCs compensates for this factor at the lower end of the curve. Nevertheless, the AShCs’ performance is capped due to the physical conflicts between the rail-mounted gantry (RMG) cranes/quay crane, the AShCs and the chosen in-gauge operation. RMG utility is higher for the regular AGV system compared with the cassette AGV system. The decoupling with cassettes allows for more flexibility in job selection and more efficient use. The C-AGVs are in this situation comparable with the AShCs.

Having weighed up the advantages and disadvantages there will undoubtedly be a ramp-up in the number of ports looking to invest in automated equipment moving forward across a number of the key regions. But progress, it seems, will still be slow.

Mark Simmons, senior vice president at Inchcape Shipping Services, says: “With our 300 offices at ports around the world we continue to monitor the development of automation and technology in the maritime sector. Our insights and research shows that the number of planned ports and terminals using automation when compared to the overall number of facilities capable of handling containers is still very low.

“Indeed, even by 2020 the use of automation will still be less than 5% of the total number of facilities worldwide, so we have a significant opportunity for development to embrace as an industry.”