2 Graphical System (TOPX)

2.4 Equipment Control

2.4.1 Overview

Equipment Control optimises the assignment of container move instructions to the equipment in the yard increasing a terminal's productivity and throughput without the need to increase manning/staffing levels and, in many cases, can lead to a reduction in the number of staff required should the terminal require to cut its costs.

The implementation of Mobile Data Terminals (MDT) to display container move instructions and Hand Held Terminals (HHT) to carryout yard inventory checking reduces the number of paper lists required by the terminal staff, also the use of these devices for data entry are various key point in the terminal make the entered data available to all users immediately it is entered.

Mobile Data Terminals are used for the following operation:

• in the yard equipment for the processing of container move instructions

Hand Held Terminals are used for the following operations:

• in the yard to record location of inventory
• at the in-gate to record container details, seals, damage, service required
• at the out-gate to record and check delivery container details
• at the ship side to record container details
• at the rail siding to record container details

When a truck or a trailer arrives at its point of unloading in the yard, the equipment operator, using the Radio Frequency devices, enters its identifier, the system then automatically displays the containers to be processed and the optimum location to place the containers.

Yard equipment is assigned dynamically by the yard manager to work multiple work queues this having the advantage that the equipment is assigned to work queues automatically based on the best move at the time, thus facilitating the most efficient throughput. The system processes all the known truck, vessel, yard consolidations or rail work instructions in realtime and assigns work instructions automatically, thus there is no manual assignment of work instructions to the equipment except in a situation where an exception may occur. In this case, then a supervisor can take control of the individual situation, resolve it and return to automatic processing.

2.4 Equipment Control

2.4.2 Key Benefit

The equipment operator can carry out the instruction automatically recommended by the system or in the case of exceptions, place the containers in another location. The system allows the user to take control in cases where exception handling is required then switch back to automatic control when the exception has been resolved.

The equipment operator selects the container to be processed from the MDT, carries out the container movement instruction and then confirms the container’s location, all without any data entry and a minimum of key strokes. Equipment operators can concentrate on the primary task of operating the equipment and not to be concerned or distracted with the selection of their next task, which is generated automatically depending on the equipment's location and the system's parameters.

A reduced number of staff are needed in the control centre as work instruction are automatically assigned and large numbers of people are not required to assign work instructions manually.

A major benefit to the terminal is that it primarily operates in fully automatic mode but when a situation arises the terminal supervisor may take control of the system or make changes to the system’s parameters to alter the automatic processing to suit the situation.

Automatic processing makes for efficient use of yard equipment, reducing the number of rehandles and increasing the productivity of the equipment. In some terminals move rates of 50+ per hour have been achieved using the TOPS system.

2.4 Equipment Control

2.4.3 Feature Summary

• Central control of all container handling equipment
• Dynamic assignment/un-assignment of work queues
• Dynamic activate/deactivate of work queues
• Monitor and control of all radio Frequency (RF) devices
• Dynamic activate/deactivate of work instructions
• Work order exception handling
• Audit log of all equipment activity
• Reports (fixed and user configured)