This week's Wednesday Wisdom, an interesting extract from one of PTI's technical papers, comes from Mohammed Ali Ahmed, Chief Operating Officer, DP World, UAE.
It focuses on DP World’s Container Terminal 4 at Jebel Ali Port in Dubai — the largest marine terminal in the Middle East and a part of the UAE Region.
It is the flagship facility of DP World’s portfolio of over 70 marine terminals spread across six continents.
Optimising technology utilisation at ports the world over has been slow. This is not surprising for a variety of reasons.
The cost and logistics of revamping a port so that it is completely networked, automated, and able to track cargo in real time while keeping all the processes bug free and secure is daunting.
But the need for it is real. Customers expect it. Then there is the all too popular idea of the Internet of Things (IoT), a concept that hopes to embed physical objects with electronics, networking capabilities, and so on, and use all this embedded technology to create a giant, interconnected network of real world objects.
The benefits of doing this are fairly obvious. Imagine a port where all containers, cargo, and equipment are connected together via their own local port-wide network.
This will give the port operators a direct way to not just integrate traditional non-computer based aspects of their operations with their digital systems, but also allow for real time monitoring and manipulation of these objects, leading to greatly increased operational efficiency.
This is one area where T4 is expected to break new ground. Being built from the ground up in our modern era, T4 will openly embrace the Internet of Things.
The quay cranes will be semi-automated and remotely operated, and beyond that, T4 will allow for real time monitoring of other key terminal operational aspects such as tracking container locations, equipment information and KPIs.
