Towards Digitalized and Automated Work Processes in Port

Environments

Toni Ahonen

, Helena Kortelainen

and Antti Rantala

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Visiokatu 4, Tampere, Finland

Keywords: Automation, Digitalization, Container Terminal, Port.

Abstract: Requirements for safety and productivity in container terminal processes are the key drivers for automation

and digitalized processes. While automation development has so far been focused on large terminal

environments and introduction of smart port concepts and utilization of digital technologies are to large extent

limited to megaports and forerunners, there is an increasing interest in implementing automation and

digitalization at smaller ports in profitable manner. Current paper discusses the enablers and barriers of

automation and digital services at such ports, presents a framework for customer value in the contexts and

outlines focal development targets.

1 INTRODUCTION

The ongoing trend towards larger container ship sizes

has a significant influence on the capacity and

management requirements of entire maritime end-to-

end logistics chains. The traffic of big vessels

concentrate in certain terminals as the operation

require major investments in the port machinery, and

the big vessels operate most economically in long-

distance lines. Therefore, the ports that serve mega-

vessels strengthen their role as transhipment ports

while the other harbours mainly operate as feeder

ports. While larger and larger vessels are being built

and retired ships are circulated also smaller ports

begin to receive larger vessels than before.

On the other hand, the continuous increase in the

capacity of ships no longer reduces costs, and close to

optimum size has already been achieved.

Overcapacity in container shipping and hard

competition altogether put pressure on the companies

in the business. The influences of these trends have

effects also on terminal ports of different sizes.

In terms of port efficiency, there are two focal

trends with high expectations: automation and

digitalization. While the cost factors are naturally

among the most important drivers, availability of staff

in certain locations is also a strong driver for

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8735-7701

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6480-4495

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2172-9020

automation. This also provides opportunities for

remote services and remote operations. Furthermore,

digitalization requirements are arising from the need

to support decision-making in different functions and

at different levels. In addition, younger generations

demand better working conditions and are willing to

operate in virtual environments.

Big vessels require particular investments in

terminals such as the need for bigger cranes, deeper

sea routes, etc. The requirements for managing larger

volumes and capability to handle peak loads have

effects on the quay cranes but also on all the assets at

port. In general, the requirements for time-efficiency

are increasing, e.g. the containers received previously

in 14 vessels are now transported in 4 vessels, and

simultaneously the time allowed for handling one

ship at port is decreasing.

The logistics solutions should prove to be

efficient and in addition, they are expected to be

sustainable, with functions of high safety and quality.

Customers require decreasing energy usage and zero

emission ports. Avoidance of problems and hazards

are an issue for competitive advantage of the port and

result in economic effects. Improving the reliability

and safety in port operations is regarded as a value-

adding investment.

As said above, there is an increasing trend

towards automated systems. Only 40 terminals out of

Ahonen, T., Kortelainen, H. and Rantala, A.

Towards Digitalized and Automated Work Processes in Port Environments.

DOI: 10.5220/0009488005350540

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems (VEHITS 2020), pages 535-540

ISBN: 978-989-758-419-0

535

~1,200 terminals (Chu et al. 2018) are currently

automated or semi-automated globally. Major

terminals have increased the level of automation, but

most of the small and medium sized ports still lack a

clear vision and digitalization strategy. New adaptive

solutions are needed as examples of economically

viable automation. Furthermore, one needs to

understand and calculate customer value of the

proposed solutions in terms of the key performance

indicators relevant for the customer in his business

environment.

This paper describes results of the AUTOPORT

project and aims to pinpoint the slowing and enabling

factors for port digitalization and automation, with a

discussion on future directions for smaller ports. The

overall goal of the AUTOPORT is to pave the way

towards business renewal and operational excellence

by developing ecosystem level approaches for port

logistics.

2 DIGITALIZATION IN PORT

ENVIRONMENTS

Requirements for port productivity are increasingly

hardening and larger vessels require handling of

larger volumes within shorter time windows.

Digitalisation and automation could offer solutions to

meet the demands.

2.1 Needs for Digitalization and

Automation

Automation level is increasing at ports due to

increasing labor costs, reducing workforce

availability and higher demands for predictability.

Internet of Things (IoT) replaces manual data

collection and processing, which eliminates potential

human errors (Hinkka et al. 2018). It is likely that the

level of automation will increase gradually (see

Section 2.2) and no dramatic change for manual labor

is expected. However, work processes and functions

should not be automated as such but processes should

be first simplified and restructured (Chu et al. 2018).

Connectivity is a key enabling factor of the

information exchange both locally and globally.

Furthermore, development on the sensor data

collection on the land and seaside and from the port

operations is a key enabler for making analytics for

different decision-making situations. Thus, there

needs to be a holistic approach for from the collection

of relevant data to all the way to the actual decision-

making context and utilization of the refined

information in practice. Tracking of all moving

objects and humans at a port can be regarded as a

vision for enabling the situational awareness for all

relevant stakeholders. Situational awareness is linked

to a variety of objectives that are related both

productivity and safety.

From the viewpoint of the terminal, the focus

should be on the overall performance of the port,

instead of individual operation, condition, tracking,

asset or function. The key performance indicators,

utilization of the new data as well as the related

management practices need to address different levels

and the particular natures of the operations. In order

to discuss and develop the working practices and

efficiency of the assets, their operations need to be

made visible to all the relevant stakeholders.

2.2 Phases of Digitalization

Many authors and practitioners have described the

phases of digitalization. For port operations, Port of

Rotterdam (Buck et al.) have identified four phases:

1. Digitisation of individual parties in the port

2. Integrated systems in a port community

3. Logistics chain integrated with hinterland

4. Connected ports in the global logistics chain

Automation in container handling develops also

in phases that start from operator assistance and

remote control towards full automation. Small seeds

may end up resulting in significant improvements

from the viewpoint of the end-to-end logistics system.

Thus, companies could start with the solutions

onboard the machine and integrate them with the

larger solutions.

Current technologies applied at ports are typically

a combination of old and new equipment and there

needs to be flexibility in the proposed technologies to

allow updates and investments in brownfield. Assets

need to be ready for updates whenever technology

develops. On the other hand, autonomous systems is

not a realistic short-term target in a small and medium

sized terminal. In those terminals, the key issue is to

improve the operational efficiency by connecting the

asset fleets and providing a holistic optimization

approach based on the data gathered. Machines

should be more seen as data-gathering assets that

could produce increasing amount of information from

their environment.

VEHITS 2020 - 6th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems

536

3 DEVELOPMENT OF SERVICES

FOR CONTAINER TERMINALS

IN AN ECOSYSTEM

The significance of software solutions in assets and

technologies used at ports is increasing. This calls for

new type of collaboration between companies.

3.1 Increasing Role of Software

Hämäläinen et al. (2018) stated recently that

“terminal automation as such does not radically

change the current business models of the logistics

industry, but the ever-growing software and service

business, as well as the development of open and

transparent global logistics chains does do so”. In the

development ecosystems around machinery vendors

there is plenty of room and even a particular demand

on innovative software companies.

There seems to be increasing demand for

integration capabilities in the development of

automation and software. Lehto et al. (2017) state that

a significantly higher level of standardization is

required and “once the connectivity is standardized,

diverse industry players can come together to create

robust ecosystems that further develop the

capabilities of their equipment and software

applications”.

Many complicated machines, such as forestry

tractors, industrial robots, modern container movers

and airplanes require software for functioning

properly. Therefore, a proper software engineering is

a success factor in many industries and not only in the

software industry. A recurring strategic consideration

for organizations evolving complex systems is the

decision whether to develop the software internally or

to acquire them from external sources. The software

development process is distributed among people

with different skills, because large software products

require a lot of workforce and knowhow.

There is an increasing demand for utilization of

AI for decision-making, considering the complexity

and uncertainty of the modern ports. Thus, both

researchers and practitioners are paying attention to

the topic. For instance, a decision support system for

the container storage assignment is proposed by

Gaete et al. (2017). The proposed system specifically

addresses the problem of container terminals where

inland flows present high levels of uncertainty and

variability.

3.2 From a Development Ecosystem

towards a Business Ecosystem

In recent years, inter-organizational collaboration has

increased, as even large OEMs do not have the

necessary knowhow and expertise in their

organization to develop complex products that

require a wide range of expertise and knowledge. As

a result, small specialist companies are becoming

more directly involved in product development

processes (van der Meer Kooistra & Scapens, 2015).

When customer takes part in its supplier’s product

development, they ensure that the product will fit

their needs. Organizations that engage in

collaborative R&D efforts have the opportunity to

combine their complementary knowledge sources,

facilitating the generation of technological inventions

that organizations could not achieve on their own

(Belderbos et al. 2014).

For many years, vendors have been practicing the

software development in relative isolation from other

companies. However, at some point they realized the

benefits of partnerships, and started to open their

software products to co-development. Large-scale

software products (e.g. operating systems) started to

transform from single-vendor projects into platforms

for co-development and software ecosystems. By

bringing more companies into the software

development process, they could gain increased

functionality and keep customers satisfied with less

capital investments. Collaboration generates many

advantages, such as decreased software and business

development costs, quicker time-to-market, and

economic profit (Kourtesis et al. 2012).

Development of port automation and

digitalization solutions require a variety of expertise

from technology, process and domain perspectives

and it can be argued that networked development

activities are a necessity. Even port automation and

digitalization represent large topics, they can be

considered in even larger logistics chain development

context. An automation and digitalization

development ecosystem should then understand the

whole logistics chain but particularly the ecosystem

partners’ roles in providing the specific solutions for

the individual smaller parts in the chain. This also

supports the transition from sub-optimization towards

more holistic value creation.

Customer value-driven development activities are

seen among the most significant enablers for asset

management services (Ahonen et al. 2017). Thus,

customer involvement in the development is crucial.

It can be even argued that the more complex the

technologies are, the closer customer collaboration is

Towards Digitalized and Automated Work Processes in Port Environments

537

needed to keep the focus on customer value creation.

Ahonen (2019) states that it has been acknowledged

that one should bring up the first versions, with all

their limitations, very early in order to foster

inspiration for further ideas and to start concrete

development work together with the customer.

3.3 Sources of Customer Value

The stage of adoption varies among port

technologies. While information systems for terminal

and port management and basic monitoring

capabilities are already widespread, the more

advanced solutions for predictive asset performance,

digital twins, location and motion tracking for safety

and advanced communication are being development

but are still in their infancy.

It is crucial to understand the desired value of the

developed solutions from the beginning. Figure 1

highlights the importance of the information systems

that, on one hand, are domain specific and, on the

other hand, need to comprise an integrated set of

solutions for the customer. Figure also brings forth

three main areas of consideration: how to manage the

assets at port in a sustainable manner, how to

maximize the value creation by operations

optimization and how to support the value creation by

services provided in the ecosystem.

Figure 1: A framework for customer value creation.

3.3.1 Data Sharing for Quick Response

One of the focal bottlenecks of operational decision-

making are the unpredicted occasions, related to e.g.

traffic at the port. Thus, increasing the predictability

of the operations by automation and data-driven

solutions should be addressed. However, processes

for exception handling need to be carefully

considered since these activities have significant

impact on the systems overall productivity. In their

position paper, Rintanen & Thomas state that “the key

to exception handling is a fast detection and

understanding of the situation and a swift

intervention to get the process moving again”.

It is acknowledged, that one should understand

the optimization challenges of the whole logistics

chain for better utilization of data for individual

optimization or decision-making problems.

minimization of the turnaround time for the vessels,

early sharing of information and minimization of the

lead times for stakeholders, optimized and flexible

use of the assets, fast reaction in exception

management situations, minimization of the amount

of housekeeping and operational delays.

3.3.2 Availability Performance and

Resource Utilization

According to the recent study of Cederqvist,

optimized maintenance, “automated terminals today

are achieving on-demand equipment availability

close to or above 99%”. It is also stated that compared

with manual operations, automated operations have a

decreasing effect on the failure rates, resulting in

lower maintenance costs.

Adoption of predictive maintenance technologies

for port assets is still rather limited. A combination of

failure diagnostics and predictive maintenance

selected for the assets based on their criticality may

decrease the mean time to restoration and the

unavailability. It is proposed that decisions on new

solutions are made by considering the minimization

of the lifecycle costs by joint optimization of a)

maintenance costs, b) maintenance investments, c)

unavailability costs.

3.3.3 Performance-based Business Models

Business models for ensuring the availability

performance of the assets are changing. There is a

change towards capacity selling where a service

provider is expected to take larger responsibility and

is also required to better understand the variety of

aspects influencing the performance. However, the

business related to port environments is traditional

and the change towards more holistic services is slow.

Value-sharing contract could offer a potential

solution for the problem that emerges from high cost

of automatized machines (Kortelainen et al. 2019).

Assets &

Infrastructure

Services

Operations

Port authority systems

Maritime operations information

Port operations information systems

Terminal operating systems

TLS systems

CMMS/EAM management system

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3.4 Enablers for Container Terminal

Optimization through Automation

and Digital Services

This far, higher level automation has been

implemented mostly in the container handling

systems of large ports. However, the level of

automation could increase in all sort of container

handling systems if automated solutions could

provide lower lifecycle costs than the manual options.

Adoption of automation technologies at smaller

ports is still a challenge from the cost-benefit

perspective. Re-design is needed for the automation

solutions to make them fit for smaller ports.

Major share of the new automation installations

take place as brownfield investments since greenfield

harbor investments are seldom. When existing

installations are automated, special service offering is

required to design and plan the replacement in such a

way that costs and efficiency are optimized. There is

also an increasing demand for thinking the re-use of

the previous assets. Processes for installations need to

be developed also to minimize interference with the

terminal operations.

3.5 Factors Slowing down the

Development of Automation

The terminal asset base can be very different in age,

purchased from different vendors. This may hinder

the consideration of the processes as a whole while

automating them. Customers may have limited

understanding on automation, which also impacts on

the collaboration interests and capabilities.

Current technologies for automation are primarily

suitable for repetitive tasks, while complex and

varying tasks are more challenging for automation.

However, the increase of the automation level brings

predictability, planning ability and thus decreases the

need for disturbance management. However, one of

the key benefits comes from the development of the

processes while automating them.

Chu et al. 2018 state that the lack of a structured,

standardized and transparent data is a bottleneck for

making most of digitalization at port environments. If

the business needs and decision-making and

optimization targets of the port as a whole are not

thoroughly understood, the full utilization of the data

cannot take place. Anwar et al. (2019) recognize the

lack of “empirical research on information exchange

between the teams on ground and decision makers”.

4 SUMMARY OF THE

IDENTIFIED DEVELOPMENT

AREAS

We highlight the following topical issues and focus

areas related to increasing the automation level and

development of digital services.

Domain knowledge from R&D and services as

well as understanding of the physical phenomena and

system level thinking should be combined with

analytics expertise when processing and refining the

data received from different sources. The integration

of the domain knowledge and deep experience is

currently seen as a bottleneck in developing

maintenance analytics. Lack of collaboration between

software developers, data analysts and domain

experts may concern the development of digital

services at a more general level as well.

While there are still challenges in acquiring data

from machines, logistics, and processes to be utilized

for maintaining, operating and optimizing the systems

as well as in creating data-driven services as

described above, there is also a variety of non-

technological challenges. Thus, development of data-

based services is still rather internal-driven and

stronger customer involvement is needed.

Furthermore, the machinery suppliers and vendors

have still not systematically structured their portfolios

of data-based services.

Utilization of data offers a variety of opportunities

from logistics chain optimization to machine level

aspects. From the port environment perspective, we

highlight the importance of the development of the

overall efficiency of the port, fleet performance

optimization and energy consumption optimization.

While in large ports and greenfields full

automation may be designed right from the

beginning, in smaller ports and brownfields the

automation investments need to be carefully focused.

The most important factors in the development of the

solutions for small and medium-sized ports are the

scalability and cost-efficiency of the proposed

solutions.

For automatization of small and medium sized

ports, small volumes without standard cargo, and

machine fleet with multi-function work cycles make

them difficult areas for full automation. From safety

perspective, full automation is a desired option when

compared with mixed traffic where regulation

requirements and costly situational awareness

systems bring challenges. However, for small and

medium-sized ports, mixed traffic solutions are to be

emphasized. Furthermore, alongside with larger

Towards Digitalized and Automated Work Processes in Port Environments

539

terminals smaller terminals are also facing increasing

demand for productivity in the near future.

There may be a need to reconsider business

models towards circular economy with regards to

brownfield investments where one needs to manage

the end-of-life and potential re-use models of the

previous installed base. Furthermore, one needs to

develop efficient operational models for

implementing the investment at port so that the

operational efficiency is not threatened.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors gratefully acknowledge Business Finland

for funding the AUTOPORT project and the

companies involved in the research.

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