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The impact of COVID-19 continues to reap havoc with supply chains, the Ukraine war is changing the fundamentals of trade in key commodity sectors and the world overall is advancing into an era of greater economic uncertainty.

The ports sector has, more than most, been buffeted on the waves of these dynamics – the practical outcome being realities such as late vessel arrivals, a general inability to plan around scheduled vessel arrival and departure times, yard congestion, labour and trucker shortages and an expanding web of health and other regulatory requirements to respond to.

There is no doubt that in today’s world, the world that has unfolded since 2019, port sector participants – port authorities, terminal operators and related service industries – have been challenged and continue to be challenged in the ‘new normal’ conditions.

An area of increasing interest as a path to establishing order under the prevailing challenging conditions, as well as generally in pursuit of higher levels of efficiency, is digitalisation. A prominent example of this in the fundamentally important area of asset management and resource planning is the MIMS software available from UAE-based Arrow Labs.

Arrow Labs flagship SaaS platform, MIMs, is a workflow management solution that helps organisations plan and execute complex workflows while ensuring field teams deliver results on time for each project milestone.

As Arrow Labs puts it: “The MIMS suite offers an integrated experience that ties all company processes and people into a time and money saving platform.” The company claims that typically use of the solution can increase staffproductivity by up to 30 per cent and reduce operating costs by up to 20 per cent.

“Employing different applications, from no-code workflow builder to automated capacity planning, organisations can effectively schedule, manage projects and reduce the ‘slow-down’ caused by manual effort. MIMS real-time dashboards provide important KPIs for each project milestone as well as other important metrics,” explains Arrow Labs.

Introducing the system, experience shows, is straightforward – “…easy setup for companies of any size and anywhere,” as Arrow Labs puts it. This includes the option of the MIMS app, with a user-friendly interface, which further facilitates the overall goal of seamless collaboration, communication and exchange of information including from remote locations.

WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT

The scope for application of the MIMS solution is considerable. It basically boils down to any aspect of day-to day-business or one-offprojects where it is identified that an advanced workforce management solution can improve efficiency across company processes, assets and in conjunction with human capital. For port administration, for example, it can be deployed in conjunction with nautical services activities – tug, pilot boat and mooring – or with maintenance or security related activities. At a terminal operating level, typical applications include: workforce resource planning; specific operations such as those related to container terminal gate activity or intermodal rail load/unload operations and with back-up activities such as maintenance or safety and security.

EFFECTIVENESS PROVEN

The effectiveness of the MIMS software has been proven in the sphere of port activities – a prime example being as deployed for the DP World terminal operating group in conjunction with security activities across the group’s multiple terminal operating platforms.

Paper-based logs and disparate systems created difficulty in gathering information and presented challenges in coordinating response to various incidents in a timely fashion. This complexity placed a huge burden on security personnel to make informed decisions and resolve incidents quickly to ensure compliance to port safety standards. As a result, DPW’s security management team felt it critically necessary to improve port safety operations by streamlining the basis for better decision-making and drastically reducing incident response time. It is with achieving this important goal in mind that MIMS software was enlisted.

As DP World puts it: “MIMS helped us by automating and streamlining the operations of the security force in the field by accurately reporting incidents in real-time, enabling the capture of incident details supported by photos and videos via mobile phones. MIMS also provided electronic logging of all field tasks including patrolling and inspections, completely eliminating the need for previously used paper-based logs.”

Arrow Labs was engaged early on in the project right through to modelling processes and workflow. Drawing on information provided by DPW sources and its own due diligence it brought into sight opportunities to improve and eliminate bottlenecks, bridge the gaps and automate procedures that would in turn assist in achieving the key objective of reduced response times.

Overall, DPW’s security management team reports that the main advantages secured by using MIMS include: …”a considerable reduction in reporting times, quick handling and resolution of incidents, real-time operational visibility and access to electronically stored information that is readily available for decision-making and planning.”