Its not all about easing congestion

We must embrace available technology to ensure that the containers being received and delivered from our ports add to global economic growth rather than stifle it. As the tech companies continue to develop more functionality and more seamless integration, the pressure will fall squarely on management to implement the changes required to take full advantage. We have precedents to guide us. We can look to the automobile industry and the airline industry where, through creative business process reengineering and re-education of the workforce, workers work in harmony to reach new efficiencies. More jobs have been created in these industries because technology was embraced rather than viewed as the means by which jobs were eliminated.

They want to maximise their own return on assets (especially those that involve expensive software solutions). But terminal customers are also demanding faster turnaround, faster truck turns and so on, all of which means that terminals with automated processes and the latest TOS can use their deployment as a selling point. A much better marketing campaign than having ships queuing to get into port or trucks backed up outside the gate belching fumes into the neighbourhood.

“Ports are under the gun in both an economic and a legislative sense,” says Tatterson. (He could have added environmental too). “They are looking for operators to do something and for the technology to provide answers.”