Post by dockside on Nov 28, 2008 12:32:28 GMT -5
CALIFORNIA DREAMING:
West Coast is lab for Terminal Innovations
November 24, 2008
From cargo terminal software that tracks the stacks of boxes and matches them with their location on container ships to green berths where cargo ships “cold iron” by plugging into giant electrical plugs to reduce port pollution, when it comes to new terminal technology, they tried it first on the West Coast.
The only problem is that for every action there is often an equal and opposite reaction. In the case of reduced port pollution through cold ironing, power must be generated off port. In the case of software and hardware that makes terminals more agile, people — often union employees — are frequently eliminated. And it can take so long to transition an operating terminal to new software and yard equipment that it loses its best customers.
Now is a good time to think about the implications of efficiency, as our sister publication Pacific Shipper reports.
Cargo volume is down, and congestion at West Coast marine terminals is only a bad memory. But industry veterans know they’ll be scrambling for space when economic conditions improve.
That is why terminal operators intend to use the International Longshore and Warehouse Union contract that was negotiated this year on the West Coast, and the International Longshoremen’s Association contract that will be negotiated next year on the East Coast, as opportunities to improve port productivity.
“Over time, U.S.-based facilities want to have world-class terminals,” said Bill Rooney, managing director for the Americas at Hanjin Shipping Co. “We have to gravitate toward world-class standards based on safety, the environment and productivity.”
Hanjin just signed an agreement with the Port of Jacksonville for a Greenfield terminal that could handle 1 million cargo containers annually. The finalized deal has the port authority constructing an 88-acre facility, with capacity for 800,000 containers a year, on port-owned land at the Dames Point Marine Terminal. As was the case with the adjacent TraPac Greenfield development that will open at the end of this year to handle MOL containers, Hanjin worked closely with union representatives to reach an agreement on gang sizes and the types of equipment to be deployed.
According to carriers, most terminals on both coasts average 25 moves per hour, compared with 30 or more in Asia and Europe. TraPac and Hanjin expect as many as 40 moves an hour.
European and Asian terminal operators were the first to adopt information technology and modern cargo-handling equipment. They were able to marry computerized terminal-operating systems with ultra-efficient machines to maximize production from limited acreage.
Companies hope to use the 2008 ILWU contract and the ILA agreement to be negotiated next year as springboards for improved productivity at California ports and along the East Coast. A key will be whether employers can negotiate new manning agreements to go with the computer systems and modern cargo-handling equipment.
The 2002 ILWU contract gave West Coast employers the flexibility to introduce computerized terminal-operating systems, optical character readers and cameras at their facilities. Information that in the past had been laboriously processed by marine clerks is now fed electronically to the marine terminal’s computer, bypassing the marine clerk.
Because clerks are now needed primarily to handle exceptions, a single clerk can safely and efficiently manage several cranes from the terminal tower, or control center. Employers willing to wrestle with the ILWU for elimination of clerk positions not only improved their efficiency but also significantly lowered their costs. Other operators simply moved the clerks from the yard to the tower but eliminated few if any positions.
West Coast employers will now face a similar choice under the 2008 contract when it comes to manning requirements for modern cargo-handling equipment. The new contract allows for introduction of efficient equipment such as tandem-lift cranes, which lift two containers at a time, and rail-mounted gantry cranes.
“The contract is specific. Employers have the right to automate their facilities in the way that they see fit,” said Jim McKenna, president of the Pacific Maritime Association, the bargaining organization for West Coast employers.
However, the contract is silent on manning requirements, so it will be up to each employer, most likely with PMA involvement, to negotiate with the ILWU over how many general longshoremen and marine clerks will be needed to operate each piece of equipment.
One example is the rail-mounted gantry crane. The quay-crane operator lifts a container from the vessel and places it on the apron. The rail-mounted gantry then picks up the container and moves it across the container yard to a stack where it will await the arrival of a trucker.
This operation can potentially replace dozens of workers needed to move containers on yard tractors to the stacks. Also, traditional crane operations call for the use of two operators per crane. With rail-mounted gantries, one longshoreman can operate the crane from the tower — or if the cranes are automated, he can operate multiple cranes from the tower.
This operation offers the added safety and productivity benefits of restricting street trucks to an area at the end of the container stack. Currently, truckers with empty chassis must drive through the terminals in search of containers, contributing to congestion and increasing safety risks.
A terminal that is designed from the ground up for straddle crane operations, such as the 2-year-old APM Terminals facility in Portsmouth, Va., the Port Everglades Terminal at Port Everglades and the two new terminals at Jaxport, presents terminal operators with an ideal situation. To compete with the agility of the Greenfields, the vast majority of terminals would have to be reconfigured, at great expense, to accommodate this type of operation. And the costs can be more than financial.
The Port of Miami Terminal Operating Co. has spent more than $25 million over the past four years leveling the terminal, deploying computer technology it developed in collaboration with Tideworks Technology and adapting to new high-speed gantry cranes.
The turnaround time was reduced to less than 40 minutes for the average dray. But the time it took for POMTOC to implement its efficiency innovations in collaboration with the port and its clients cost the terminal dearly.
Finally, when POMTOC was up to speed and about to purchase straddle carriers, the port restructured its deal with rival terminals, reducing POMTOC’s potential client base and restricting its ability to pay for the final part of its efficiency upgrades, more agile yard equipment.
By contrast, Port Everglades Terminal LLC at Port Everglades contracted for the full suite of Tideworks Technology terminal operation software before its development and never confronted the difficulties of a transition, as it became one of the most agile terminals in Florida.
The marine engineering firm DMJM Harris — consultant at Jaxport — estimates that a working terminal with four berths would need about 18 months to reconfigure each berth.
That means the entire job would take six years, not counting the environmental impact studies, said Mark Sisson, associate vice president and transportation planner at DMJM Harris. Ironically, POMTOC’s efforts were on time, based on the DMJM timeline.
Rooney said employers on both coasts must look at the wide variety of options available today for improving productivity. “We will have to discuss long-term technology. All available technology will be considered, although all technology will not necessarily be used at all terminals,” he said.
Improving terminal productivity does not always require elaborate technology. Sisson noted that quick gains can be realized by simpler measures such as working vessels with more quay cranes, hiring more workers to avoid interruptions from lunch and coffee breaks, keeping terminal gates open longer and moving chassis off of the terminal to free up space.
In Florida, most union gangs break for lunch, halting operations. Only Seaboard’s terminal at the Port of Miami operates seven days a week. And recent studies at the Port of Miami and Port Everglades have found that even at the busiest times, berths are empty 60 percent of the time, suggesting an ability to increase productivity by 60 percent by merely scheduling more ship calls.
The green thing
California is also out front in the effort to reduce berth air pollution by forcing oil-powered ships to turn off their engines and plug into an electrical power source at the dock.
Earlier this month, a dockside commissioning ceremony was held at the International Transportation Service Inc. terminal at the Port of Long Beach to mark the completion of an $8 million project that installed electrical power outlets for ships docking at Pier G. Plug-in shore-side power, also known as “cold-ironing,” allows a ship to shut down its auxiliary engine while docked, for a 100 percent reduction of air pollution at the berth. Without shore-side electricity, a ship would use its own diesel-powered auxiliary engine to power refrigerated containers, pumps, lighting, air conditioning and computers while at dock.
“Shore-side power is a top environmental initiative under our Green Port Policy,” said Harbor Commission President James C. Hankla. “Because many ships burn unclean bunker fuel, shutting down their engines achieves major air quality improvements immediately.”
Ships account for about 50 percent of port-related air pollution, much of it from auxiliary engines. Shutting down a single ship’s diesel engines at berth for a day achieves the same air quality improvements as taking 33,000 cars off Southern California roads for a day, according to environmental advocates.
However, a new substation was required to accommodate the increased demand for electricity at Pier G, since plugged-in ships each require as much as six megawatts of power (enough to power 4,000 homes).
A megawatt is 1 million watts and a kilowatt is 1,000 watts.
It takes one ton of coal to generate an average of 2,500-kilowatt hours of electricity.
As part of its “green” lease with the port for the ITS property, “K” Line agreed to retrofit all five of its ships berthing at G232 to accommodate this shore-side power.
Because Long Beach is the only port offering the cold-ironing option, “K” Line has not been compelled to confront the next issue along the cold ironing chain: which plug becomes standard?
European shipping experts have warned against widespread cold ironing, citing the same reasons that face international travelers. Each nation has a different electrical grid with no standardized plug configuration and different amperage and voltage. To become universally acceptable, cold-ironing “plugs” and systems would require International Maritime Organization study and standardization.
Substantial reporting by Bill Mongelluzzo
West Coast is lab for Terminal Innovations
November 24, 2008
From cargo terminal software that tracks the stacks of boxes and matches them with their location on container ships to green berths where cargo ships “cold iron” by plugging into giant electrical plugs to reduce port pollution, when it comes to new terminal technology, they tried it first on the West Coast.
The only problem is that for every action there is often an equal and opposite reaction. In the case of reduced port pollution through cold ironing, power must be generated off port. In the case of software and hardware that makes terminals more agile, people — often union employees — are frequently eliminated. And it can take so long to transition an operating terminal to new software and yard equipment that it loses its best customers.
Now is a good time to think about the implications of efficiency, as our sister publication Pacific Shipper reports.
Cargo volume is down, and congestion at West Coast marine terminals is only a bad memory. But industry veterans know they’ll be scrambling for space when economic conditions improve.
That is why terminal operators intend to use the International Longshore and Warehouse Union contract that was negotiated this year on the West Coast, and the International Longshoremen’s Association contract that will be negotiated next year on the East Coast, as opportunities to improve port productivity.
“Over time, U.S.-based facilities want to have world-class terminals,” said Bill Rooney, managing director for the Americas at Hanjin Shipping Co. “We have to gravitate toward world-class standards based on safety, the environment and productivity.”
Hanjin just signed an agreement with the Port of Jacksonville for a Greenfield terminal that could handle 1 million cargo containers annually. The finalized deal has the port authority constructing an 88-acre facility, with capacity for 800,000 containers a year, on port-owned land at the Dames Point Marine Terminal. As was the case with the adjacent TraPac Greenfield development that will open at the end of this year to handle MOL containers, Hanjin worked closely with union representatives to reach an agreement on gang sizes and the types of equipment to be deployed.
According to carriers, most terminals on both coasts average 25 moves per hour, compared with 30 or more in Asia and Europe. TraPac and Hanjin expect as many as 40 moves an hour.
European and Asian terminal operators were the first to adopt information technology and modern cargo-handling equipment. They were able to marry computerized terminal-operating systems with ultra-efficient machines to maximize production from limited acreage.
Companies hope to use the 2008 ILWU contract and the ILA agreement to be negotiated next year as springboards for improved productivity at California ports and along the East Coast. A key will be whether employers can negotiate new manning agreements to go with the computer systems and modern cargo-handling equipment.
The 2002 ILWU contract gave West Coast employers the flexibility to introduce computerized terminal-operating systems, optical character readers and cameras at their facilities. Information that in the past had been laboriously processed by marine clerks is now fed electronically to the marine terminal’s computer, bypassing the marine clerk.
Because clerks are now needed primarily to handle exceptions, a single clerk can safely and efficiently manage several cranes from the terminal tower, or control center. Employers willing to wrestle with the ILWU for elimination of clerk positions not only improved their efficiency but also significantly lowered their costs. Other operators simply moved the clerks from the yard to the tower but eliminated few if any positions.
West Coast employers will now face a similar choice under the 2008 contract when it comes to manning requirements for modern cargo-handling equipment. The new contract allows for introduction of efficient equipment such as tandem-lift cranes, which lift two containers at a time, and rail-mounted gantry cranes.
“The contract is specific. Employers have the right to automate their facilities in the way that they see fit,” said Jim McKenna, president of the Pacific Maritime Association, the bargaining organization for West Coast employers.
However, the contract is silent on manning requirements, so it will be up to each employer, most likely with PMA involvement, to negotiate with the ILWU over how many general longshoremen and marine clerks will be needed to operate each piece of equipment.
One example is the rail-mounted gantry crane. The quay-crane operator lifts a container from the vessel and places it on the apron. The rail-mounted gantry then picks up the container and moves it across the container yard to a stack where it will await the arrival of a trucker.
This operation can potentially replace dozens of workers needed to move containers on yard tractors to the stacks. Also, traditional crane operations call for the use of two operators per crane. With rail-mounted gantries, one longshoreman can operate the crane from the tower — or if the cranes are automated, he can operate multiple cranes from the tower.
This operation offers the added safety and productivity benefits of restricting street trucks to an area at the end of the container stack. Currently, truckers with empty chassis must drive through the terminals in search of containers, contributing to congestion and increasing safety risks.
A terminal that is designed from the ground up for straddle crane operations, such as the 2-year-old APM Terminals facility in Portsmouth, Va., the Port Everglades Terminal at Port Everglades and the two new terminals at Jaxport, presents terminal operators with an ideal situation. To compete with the agility of the Greenfields, the vast majority of terminals would have to be reconfigured, at great expense, to accommodate this type of operation. And the costs can be more than financial.
The Port of Miami Terminal Operating Co. has spent more than $25 million over the past four years leveling the terminal, deploying computer technology it developed in collaboration with Tideworks Technology and adapting to new high-speed gantry cranes.
The turnaround time was reduced to less than 40 minutes for the average dray. But the time it took for POMTOC to implement its efficiency innovations in collaboration with the port and its clients cost the terminal dearly.
Finally, when POMTOC was up to speed and about to purchase straddle carriers, the port restructured its deal with rival terminals, reducing POMTOC’s potential client base and restricting its ability to pay for the final part of its efficiency upgrades, more agile yard equipment.
By contrast, Port Everglades Terminal LLC at Port Everglades contracted for the full suite of Tideworks Technology terminal operation software before its development and never confronted the difficulties of a transition, as it became one of the most agile terminals in Florida.
The marine engineering firm DMJM Harris — consultant at Jaxport — estimates that a working terminal with four berths would need about 18 months to reconfigure each berth.
That means the entire job would take six years, not counting the environmental impact studies, said Mark Sisson, associate vice president and transportation planner at DMJM Harris. Ironically, POMTOC’s efforts were on time, based on the DMJM timeline.
Rooney said employers on both coasts must look at the wide variety of options available today for improving productivity. “We will have to discuss long-term technology. All available technology will be considered, although all technology will not necessarily be used at all terminals,” he said.
Improving terminal productivity does not always require elaborate technology. Sisson noted that quick gains can be realized by simpler measures such as working vessels with more quay cranes, hiring more workers to avoid interruptions from lunch and coffee breaks, keeping terminal gates open longer and moving chassis off of the terminal to free up space.
In Florida, most union gangs break for lunch, halting operations. Only Seaboard’s terminal at the Port of Miami operates seven days a week. And recent studies at the Port of Miami and Port Everglades have found that even at the busiest times, berths are empty 60 percent of the time, suggesting an ability to increase productivity by 60 percent by merely scheduling more ship calls.
The green thing
California is also out front in the effort to reduce berth air pollution by forcing oil-powered ships to turn off their engines and plug into an electrical power source at the dock.
Earlier this month, a dockside commissioning ceremony was held at the International Transportation Service Inc. terminal at the Port of Long Beach to mark the completion of an $8 million project that installed electrical power outlets for ships docking at Pier G. Plug-in shore-side power, also known as “cold-ironing,” allows a ship to shut down its auxiliary engine while docked, for a 100 percent reduction of air pollution at the berth. Without shore-side electricity, a ship would use its own diesel-powered auxiliary engine to power refrigerated containers, pumps, lighting, air conditioning and computers while at dock.
“Shore-side power is a top environmental initiative under our Green Port Policy,” said Harbor Commission President James C. Hankla. “Because many ships burn unclean bunker fuel, shutting down their engines achieves major air quality improvements immediately.”
Ships account for about 50 percent of port-related air pollution, much of it from auxiliary engines. Shutting down a single ship’s diesel engines at berth for a day achieves the same air quality improvements as taking 33,000 cars off Southern California roads for a day, according to environmental advocates.
However, a new substation was required to accommodate the increased demand for electricity at Pier G, since plugged-in ships each require as much as six megawatts of power (enough to power 4,000 homes).
A megawatt is 1 million watts and a kilowatt is 1,000 watts.
It takes one ton of coal to generate an average of 2,500-kilowatt hours of electricity.
As part of its “green” lease with the port for the ITS property, “K” Line agreed to retrofit all five of its ships berthing at G232 to accommodate this shore-side power.
Because Long Beach is the only port offering the cold-ironing option, “K” Line has not been compelled to confront the next issue along the cold ironing chain: which plug becomes standard?
European shipping experts have warned against widespread cold ironing, citing the same reasons that face international travelers. Each nation has a different electrical grid with no standardized plug configuration and different amperage and voltage. To become universally acceptable, cold-ironing “plugs” and systems would require International Maritime Organization study and standardization.
Substantial reporting by Bill Mongelluzzo
