Automation a necessity, not a luxury

“If a terminal is fully utilised, at or near peak capacity, there is really little or no room for error. You really need automation.”

He adds that the port’s absolute size is not always the main determinant, explaining that Navis systems have been deployed at medium sized ports like Oakland and Seattle.

Though terminal operating systems from Navis, married to its active RFID solutions, are found in many of the facilities throughout Los Angeles/Long Beach – including the big APM Terminal – Mr Scott says that one of the early Navis customers was an off-site trans-loading facility that was, “way over capacity”.

Allowing late arrival times for boxes prior to a sailing, an important customer service differentiator for shipping lines in competitive markets, is also an important consideration as terminals look toward automation. As an example, Mr Scott cites Matson and Horizon Lines, which he says “need automation to allow tight cut-off times. The trucks can arrive very close to the sailing time.”

He explains that the RFID tracking technology is so sensitive, that it can tell if a truck is slowing down, or has stopped to unhook a container, and automatically notify the TOS. Mr Scott likens the active RFID tags to a beacon “blinking every five seconds”.

Complexity in yard operations provides an impetus for an automated approach; Mr. Scott explains that its solutions reduce the uncertainty caused by trucks moving around terminals, driving to an exact location for container pickup, and the necessity of moving truck chassis around. The active RFID enables the TOS to provide a work instruction to the operator of a rubber-tyred gantry or top-handler, after a truck (with its identity logged through optical character recognition) is linked to a box (with an RFID tag) in the system.

The Navis RFID installation at APM’s Portsmouth, Virginia, Terminal is the first and only terminal in the US that combines manned trucks with automatic stacking cranes- allowing the use of passive RFID tags, since movements of trucks within the terminal are limited to circumscribed locations. Mr Scott suggests that the Long Beach and Tra-Pac terminals will use “Active RTLS Wheretag”, an active RFID tag already on most trucks – and already required for access to most terminals.

He adds that with RFID “there’s much less confusion about where the trucks are, compared to other terminals”.