Ports and Terminals

In this interview, we explore how the Port of Virginia is actively adopting technology to elevate efficiency, sustainability, and safety.

Today, most container terminals worldwide still have a fully manual operation for the yard, quay and transport. However, labour shortages and environmental considerations have made automation increasingly attractive. Container terminals would also like to increase their capacity and efficiency on the existing footprint. This means operators are looking into automation to increase their throughput capacity and to be less affected by labour shortages.

The concept of redefining the roles of sellers and buyers, producers and consumers, is not new. Marshall McLuhan famously stated that the “medium is the message”, referring to the television industry in the 1960s. His theories on electronic communication highlighted the shift in power between producers and consumers, suggesting that the television audience was the content consumed by advertisers.

Ports stand where different modes of transportation converge. These include maritime shipping, rail transport, road transport and sometimes even air transport. More than ever, the pursuit of excellence and competitiveness requires port operators and other supply chain actors to achieve three key objectives: resiliency, fluidity, visibility.

5G New Radio (NR) technology is emerging as one of the cornerstones in the development of the smart ports of the future, with the ability to support everything from the remote operation of wirelessly connected cranes and automated guided vehicles to the wireless transmission of video streams recorded by multiple cameras. This article presents the findings of Ericsson researchers who have created a Digital Twin powered by cutting-edge GPU computing to accurately dimension and realistically model the performance of a private 5G network in a smart-port environment.

Automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) are a proven automated transport system for container terminals. Since the introduction in 1993 at ECT in the Port of Rotterdam, AGVs have been used at more than 10 sites across the world. Currently, AGVs are there with the most successful automated transport system in container terminals. AGVs are reliable and can support high Quay Crane (QC) productivity In addition, battery AGVs have been available since 2012, supporting zero-emission terminals.

Port terminal operators are using digitalisation to become more flexible and resilient so they can respond to volatile market demands, shifting transport routes, and growing vessel sizes with greater speed, agility, coordination, and collaboration. To succeed, they need digital-ready connectivity platforms that can enable and optimise advanced Port 4.0 use cases such as autonomous operations, wireless data, worker collaboration, computer vision, and environmental monitoring.

Container terminals are living ecosystems built over complex and large infrastructures with several parties interacting in a coordinated way to offer highly complex logistic services under strict operational planning and tight cost controls. Due to the port and shipping industry’s competitiveness, challenging requirements, and demanding needs, operations within a container terminal must be accurately carried out to achieve high operational efficiency, while also ensuring safety, sustainability, reliability, and profitability.

Increasingly, participants in supply chains are digitising their operations and looking to new technologies for the future of continuous optimisation. With so many different components in motion within the supply chain, real-time data sharing is integral for ports to maintain big-picture vision while keeping an eye on day-to-day movements to identify where problems are occurring.

In 2020, INFORM’s Dr. Eva Savelsberg sat down for an interview with Matthew Wittemeier to share her perspective on global trends, technology, society, and environmental issues that were pushing and pulling the global supply chain. At the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the trends discussed were accurate. In INFORM’s latest article, Eva and Matthew have once again sat down for an in-depth discussion of the state of the industry.

Industrial automation and control systems have a direct effect on the physical world, while cybersecurity incidents can lead to financial, health, safety, and environmental impacts. Potential threat scenarios range from data security breaches and ransomware attacks to the theft of goods and even shutting down the operations of the entire port.