Vostochnaya Stevedoring Company

Solvo.CTMS Deployed at Vostochnaya Stevedoring Company Container Terminal

Terminal Specifications

• Container Turnover: 401 thousand TEU in year 2008
• Overall Area: 73.4 ha
• Number of Mooring Sites: 4
• Overall Mooring Length: 1284 m
• Sea Depth at Mooring Sites: 11.5 – 13.5 m
• Railroad Front: 4 railroad branches allowing for 80 conditional cars each
• Warehouse Capacity: 20000 TEU
• Refrigerator Zone Capacity: 225 containers

Available Equipment 

• 6 STS reloaders of 30.5 t hoisting capacity each
• 1 Gottwald mobile crane of 36 t hoisting capacity each
• 6 RMG reloaders of 30.5 t hoisting capacity each
• 5 warehouse cranes of 30.5 t hoisting capacity each
• 4 forklift loaders of 32 t hoisting capacity each
• 18 container trucks of 30.5 t hoisting capacity each
• 10 SISU trailers of 40 t hoisting capacity each

«The introduction of the new IT system allowed our company to achieve a high-quality optimization of the technology processes management. The software is capable of solving a wide variety of tasks, from electronic documentation circulation to ship processing management to in-terminal container movement control. As a result, VSC gained another competitive advantage from the deployment of the container accounting automation system»

– John Scourtis,
General Director
Vostochnaya Stevedoring Company LLC

Pre-Deployment State

Vostochnaya Stevedoring Company LLC (VSC) is a container terminal dedicated to transshipment of containers, general cargoes, and cars working at the Eastern Port (Nakhodka, Wrangel peninsula). The terminal is owned by Global Ports Investments Plc of the Н-Trans holding, which has a 75% share, and by DPW port operator, which has a 25% share.

In general, one of the main conditions leading to successful business of a container terminal is using technologies that are capable of real-time execution of different operations, such as warehouse records management and control, ship processing control, container movement control, railroad-front load/unload scheduling, and container motor transport arrival and load/discharge control.

Moreover, there is a need for operative control of cargoes running through customs clearance, including the cargo examination facilities.

Because some parts of VSC's documentation circulation system were accessed by third-party contractors, which are VSC's customers, it was essential that all contractor operations data were saved and could be uploaded from the documentation circulation system to the container management system, and vice versa.

Solution

To find an appropriate solution, VSC considered several Russian and foreign candidates to choose from. Among important requirements were the availability of a Russian-localized interface and the ability to perform the system deployment by Russian-speaking engineers and to provide a training program for the terminal's personnel.

Because Solvo.CTMS appeared to fully meet VSC's requirements, they chose it and decided to integrate it with their own proprietery system for automated process control, which was called Container and dedicated to handle all in-terminal processes and to provide the interaction with other parties of the transportation process.

Deployment Project Details

The project was implemented in 18 months by June 2009, with the system deployment process done with an integral and stage-by-stage approach. The deployment plan and schedule designed by Solvo Ltd. ideally suited to the needs of VSC's terminal. The technology used by Solvo actually allowed to launch the system without a need for halting the terminal operation. In this way, any time losses that might potentially result from a terminal shutdown were reduced to zero.

Technologies

During the deployment process, the zoning of the terminal's operation territory was done. By introducing allocation rules, the procedure of allocating containers became optimized. In particular, the zoning allowed to allocate containers at the terminal according to specific parameters, such as container types and sizes, freight forwarders, lines, cargo types, hazard class, etc. All data on operations done with containers are recorded in the operative management system and then transmitted to the documentation system. New requests for container movements are generated in the documentation system and then transmitted to the operative management system for processing.

As a matter of fact, the most of the VSC terminal's container turnover was made up via the ship and the railroad fronts. That's why it was important to VSC to optimize primarily the work of both of these fronts.

Another important function implemented in the system was the ability to automatically compile cargo plans for ships. Upon receiving, from the line agent, the preliminary information on the ship loading parameters, the Solvo.CTMS system automatically compiles a cargo plan. In this process, the following output data is generated:

• loading list
• list of instructions for the ship loading, including location cell numbers, container numbers, destination port, container type and height, container weight, hazard class, and other characteristics

After the completion of the procedure, the ship's cargo plan is generated and displayed at the dispatcher's workplace, and the plan is optimized according to the instruction list parameters. As a result, the automation of operation increases the performance of the ship-front terminal segment.

At the railroad front of VSC's terminal, a genetic-algorithm-based software module was deployed, designed to process and control the railroad vehicle loading. The system analyzes various container allocation options and chooses the most optimal one. The loading of containers is done according to technical requirements on placing containers on flatcars established by state agencies and the national railroad operator called Russian Railways.

In addition to the ship and railroad fronts automation, the motor vehicle front was automated too. Furthermore, the ability to control the containers transport to the cargo examination facilities and the container placement in the customs warehouse zone was implemented.

As a result, the upgrading of the automation management system of the VSC terminal by deploying the Solvo.CTMS solution allowed VSC to optimize technology processes, such as reduce costs, increase the container processing speed, streamline the machinery use, etc.

In addition, the Solvo.CTMS solution can in the long run increase the accuracy of data that describe the movements of cargoes within the terminal, and optimize the operation of the ship, railroad and motor transportation fronts. By and large, the upgrading of technology processes at the VSC terminal produced another competitive advantage for Vostochnaya Stevedoring Company.

Plans for Future

The prospects of the cooperation between VSC and Solvo have several lines of potential, including further improvement of the software module for analytics and statistics report generation, the development of a technology for terminal capacity workload assessment with regard for container types and number of container tiers, and some other tasks to enhance the terminal operation performance.