Navis, a part of Cargotec Corporation and provider of operational technologies and services that unlock greater performance and efficiency for the world’s leading organizations across the shipping supply chain, announced that following an extensive automation project, Five Continents International Container Terminal (FICT) has successfully automated its 31 rail mounted gantry (ARMG) cranes, which are now live on N4 and operational at Tianjin Port.
Located in the Port of Tianjin, the 10th busiest port in the world and the largest port in Northern China, FICT was designed with an initial capacity of 1.5 million TEU. With the rise of megaships, and the increasing volume of cargo that accompanies them, the terminal is now operating at its maximum capacity and often well beyond it. In order to increase the capacity and efficiency of the terminal, FICT launched a project to modernize its yard – automating its fleet of 31 manually operated rail-mounted stacking cranes.
“Sitting in one of the busiest ports in the world, FICT handles an extraordinary volume of cargo and we quickly realized the value that modernizing our yard operations would bring to our customers, processing their containers in the most timely and efficient manner possible,” said Song Tianwei, General Manager at FICT. “With the help of leading software and equipment providers, we completed the automation process in record time and expect to see significant gains in efficiency, which in turn will open up our capacity and allow us to serve more customers.”
The equipment retrofitting process was completed in record time and all 31 automated cranes went live in production as of April 30, 2019. Navis’ N4 software serves as the brain directing the crane operations, optimizing the sequence of work orders. Among the critical tasks managed by N4 are yard planning, vessel planning, ARMG scheduling and dispatching and prime mover/tractor-trailer scheduling and dispatching. Following the upgrade to the equipment and software, the cranes at FICT now deliver a consistent performance of 30 moves per hour, increasing the terminal’s overall capacity by more than 10 percent.
“FICT is among the early adopters of technological innovation – converting its manual operations to semi-automated by retrofitting its rail mounted cranes,” said Mark Welles, vice president and general manager Asia Pacific, Navis. “Today’s modern terminals must operate at peak productivity and efficiency on a consistent basis. FICT identified an area for improvement and with N4 Expert Decking and Primeroute, we have optimized the stowage of containers in the yard and matched productivity with the increased capacity.”
Source: Navis (Additional information about Tianjin Port at CruiseMapper)