FEPORT and PEMA have agreed to start work on standards that could include terminal automation, but not everyone agrees on what to standardise, and where to start, writes Paul Avery.
As the industry looks for a way to make implementing terminal automation simpler and more predictable, the issue of whether standards would help improve the current situation is a recurring one. Standardisation was the subject of a debate moderated by this reporter to start the TECH TOC Forum at TOC Europe in Rotterdam this month. The idea behind the debate was to gather two terminal operators and five leading suppliers that are delivering automated crane systems today, and to discuss how the industry might make some progress in this area.
Operators’ views
The terminal operators both felt a need for the industry to develop standards. Alex Duca, director and head of Automation Program at APM Terminals, said the company now has six terminals with equipment automation in its portfolio, and each is a completely different operation, with its own software and integration environment. This creates an ongoing challenge for APM Terminals, and Duca would like to see the industry move to develop standards that help make automation more “modular”, with sets of standard interfaces that can be repeated across terminals.
In another TOC conference stream, Keith
Svendsen, COO of APM Terminals, had just called for terminal operators to work together on standards if the industry is to improve its performance implementing terminal automation. “We believe automation has to happen, but we still need to address many issues, and we need to work on standards, and not increase complexity for the sake of it,” said Svendsen. “Many other industries have solved the complexities associated with automation, and terminal operators have to step up and take responsibility for this.”
Francisco Blanquer, innovation and development senior manager, Terminal Link, outlined a different scenario. He highlighted how a lack of standards is impacting not just the difficulty of implementing automation, but the ability of a terminal operator to participate in ‘Industry 4.0’ more widely. The lack of any standard interfaces and protocols, he said, means Terminal Link is faced with a US$1M development project just to access data from one of its own cranes.
As Blanquer put it, vendors today are selling “closed solutions” that work very well with their own systems, but, in doing so, “they are killing the 4.0 port industry” and making it “unrealistically expensive to access data for AI, machine learning or Big Data in any existing port”. There is a pressing need for standards, he urged, to simply be able to connect to and access data in crane systems.
A way forward
Just before TOC Europe, Kalmar president Antti Kaunonen had also called for standards, but said that suppliers cannot drive a standardisation process by themselves. “As solution and service providers, we simply can’t build an industry-wide standards framework as fast as it is needed, if such a framework is not urgently demanded by the industry – i.e. our customers. The terminal industry needs to sit up and do more on this front,” he argued.
The four other crane OEM and automation suppliers represented in the debate all backed the call for terminal operators to work together on defining standards, but there was not much agreement on what exactly should be in these standards.
Tuomas Saastamoinen, senior VP, sales and marketing, Port Solutions, Konecranes, said terminal operators should focus on defining the processes and performance levels they require from automation, leaving it to suppliers to work on the protocols and interfaces for connecting the component parts of an automation system. This, he added, would leave suppliers to focus on developing competitive products to meet the process needs, without terminal operators trying to dictate to suppliers exactly how to build their own products.
Dr Christian Koegl, senior vice president at Siemens, took a different view, and argued that the industry would be better to focus on defining protocols and interfaces for connecting to the key applications like the equipment control system. At the moment, he said, these are different for every automation project, and this increases the time and cost of
development, and slows down implementation time.
New initiative
In fact, it later transpired that work was underway to establish a forum for terminal operators to collaborate on standards. At a meeting in Brussels on 30 May, 15 members of FEPORT (the Federation of Private Port Companies and Terminals) and members from PEMA (the Port Equipment Manufacturers Association), agreed to establish the Terminal Industry Committee 4.0 (TIC 4.0) to “delineate a corpus of definitions regarding concepts and technical terminology that are specific to the container handling industry, as most of the terminology used in the sector remains subjective”. The TIC 4.0 initiative is being headed by Frank Kho, an industry veteran, with both terminal operating and vendor experience, who is now a consultant.
TIC 4.0 will be composed of subgroups, initially dealing with “safety, performance of equipment, telematics, energy, environment and procurement related definitions, as a first step towards standards definitions.” The work will start right from the beginning. Kho said that initial definitions will include things like what a ‘container move’ is, and how fuel consumption in litres per hour for a machine should be measured. FEPORT is open to terminal operators from outside Europe joining the initiative.
There was some criticism on the TOC exhibition floor that TIC 4.0 is being too conservative at a time when the industry needs to address more practical issues around
connecting systems, rather than debating very broad definitions. But, to be fair to TIC 4.0, terminal operators (and suppliers) would likely find it very hard to agree on anything too detailed. PEMA has previously produced a set of standardised interfaces for communication between TOS and equipment control systems for container handling equipment, and Duca noted that APM Terminals uses these today. However, one TOS supplier described these to this reporter as a standard for “talking to Navis” that is not relevant to its TOS.
TIC 4.0 will also have to deal with the fact that there is a limit to how far terminal operators really want to work together and share when it comes to automation. Another terminal operator executive confided that his organisation has spent heavily on developing an automation framework that it can eventually deploy across its terminals, which it regards as a competitive advantage that it does not want to share with its rival operators. Collaboration might be beneficial, he said, when it comes to interfaces on a very simple level, but the more advanced features of the company’s terminal automation framework are not something it wants to share widely.
Working together
In the meantime, the industry will keep moving forward. In the WorldCargo News debate, both Alan Peterson, industry segment leader, Crane Systems, TMEIC, and Uno Bryfors, senior vice president, Ports, ABB, noted that, as the number of automation projects gradually increases, the same suppliers find themselves working together more often, and are able to reuse interfaces and other development work from one
terminal to the next.
Peterson said that suppliers will ultimately deliver what the market demands, and if terminal operators are able to agree on standards, vendors will follow that lead, but the industry is not going to wait for this to happen.
Source: World Cargo News
