Tilbury Container Services

Source: Supply Chain Digital

Date :21/05/2007 16:04:12

Tilbury Container Services: Technology for efficiency at TCS

Tilbury Container Services is where a lot of the UK’s food arrives in refrigerated containers.Efficiency is vital, which is why the company has brought in two radical new systems to improve its operations and increase capacity

Written By David Hughes & Produced by Alex Smith

Efficiency is at the heart of the concept of container shipping. The standard-size boxes that stack have transformed the international economy, allowing far more mechanisation of loading and unloading, a greater capacity that is far faster and cheaper and all using a smaller workforce at the ports that handle them. But like any efficient system that has been around a while, there are always opportunities to take it another step. Tilbury Container Services has made just such a move.

“The way that the haulage industry in the UK works, the way that trucks turn up at ports, has always been very difficult to predict,” says Tabare Dominguez, Business Development Manager for TCS. “There are peaks that are difficult to foresee, so we are now introducing a Vehicle Booking System or VBS that will add predictability to the arrival pattern of vehicles. It gives hauliers slots for delivery or collection, which they can book on the Internet. From now on, they must have a booking, which will guarantee that we will deal with them within the hour. It won’t usually take that long – our turnaround time anyway is about 33 minutes (from gate to gate), which is very competitive in the industry, but we hope to improve that even further and eliminate delays and waiting tine before the trucks are serviced. The new system will also allow us to know what the demand will be and so we will be able to resource accordingly. It’s all about improving the efficiency and service we provide to all our customers rather than about saving costs.”

Avoiding peak-times

Traffic managers in haulage firms will now be able to book as far in advance as possible, although the system does have some flexibility built in for those inevitable times when the best laid plans go to pot. “Hauliers can change their booking within a tethered window of plus or minus six hours, as long as there are bookings available for the new time and if they can’t use it, they can return the booking to an exchange, which will allocate it on a first-come-first-served basis.”

In order to encourage take-up in off-peak times, there is a small charge for booking at peak time, although that fee is returned if the truck is not out within an hour.” What we are trying to achieve,” continues Dominguez, “is a predictable and consistent flow of vehicles which will be beneficial to all users of TCS. We will be able to handle at least 40 trucks an hour, but many will deliver and/or collect more than one container (on average about 1.6 containers) with the same booking.”

The system, which went live on 23rd February 2007, is based on the already successful system operating at Southampton, adopted to the specific needs of TCS. Dominguez is confident that the system will also be a success at TCS. “We have been discussing this development with hauliers for a long time and everyone who uses our services has been part of the process – and we have tried to incorporate their feedback.”

Competitive advantages

TCS is located on the Thames, just east of the M25 crossing at Dartford, which gives it excellent access to an enormous hinterland that includes not only the London area but with the connections to the motorway system, pretty much the whole country. Unlike other south east container terminals, TCS is no generalist: it handles a huge amount of the food that keeps the region’s shops and supermarkets supplied. It began life in 1976 as the first purpose built container terminal to be established in the UK.

TCS currently handles about 430,000 TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) per year and it has the capacity to handle up to 700,000 TEU per year. It was the first container terminal in the UK to achieve ISO 9001 and 14001 and has also been approved to the revised ISO 9001-2000 standard.

Quality control is a vital element of operations: failure to keep tabs on what’s where, which is only too easy to do when you handle the number of containers most terminals do, will lead to a loss of confidence in the service. Modern technology now offers elegant solutions to the problem.

Satellite Monitoring“

At the start of the year, we introduced a system called SATTEL, which uses GPS to identify and locate both vehicles and containers within the terminal to the maximum accuracy possible,” says Dominguez. “Up until we had this system, we couldn’t detect any near misses or instances when equipment came into contact with a container. It allows us to monitor the performance of drivers and to make sure that health and safety is a priority. It allows us to generate statistics on how things work at the terminal; if there’s a problem we can see where it is and often how to solve it, which is beneficial for staff not only in terms of efficiency but also in the prevention of accidents.

“At the same time that SATTEL has come into place, we have also introduced a new system to improve the monitoring of the all-important reefer containers: “We can now keep an eye on their functioning remotely. We will still have operators that go around to check that the machinery is still working but now if there’s a problem, for example a temperature drop or a power interruption, we will be able to detect it immediately.”

The new technologies being used by TCS, both VBS and SATTEL, have allowed it to improve efficiency and increase its capacity. TCS is now taking about 61.5 percent of the containers it could. This leaves a lot of room to grow, in as much as the ships that bring the containers in can grow, but “it’s important for the UK to have some available capacity in order to remain competitive,” says Dominquez. “If it doesn’t, shipping lines could use other ports outside the country – it’s already happened to some other ports. Admittedly, however, it is less likely with us as a niche player: we are not so much involved in the East/West trade, which is where the largest ships come in, but we are in a leading position in North/South trade with containers coming in from South America, Africa and of course Australia and New Zealand. We can handle all this traffic, no problem, and if it were to grow beyond what we believe it will, we would still be able to plan to increase our capacity.”

Economies of Scale

In addition to the technology that TCS has itself instituted, it must also deal with developments in reefer technology. “There has been a change in the type of reefer container being used,” says Dominguez. “The industry has seen a steady move away from the traditional blown-air reefer containers towards integral reefer facilities which have all the machinery to maintain the inside temperature built in. TCS has also made that move across, with the advantage that the dismantling of the blown-air units has freed up a good deal more stacking space within the terminal.”

The drive towards efficiency is coming from all quarters of the shipping industry, with economies of scale creeping ever higher up the agenda prompted, for example, by powerful supermarkets trying to keep their prices as low as possible. “There has been an increasing amount of consolidation in the industry,” says Dominguez. “Not long ago there was the takeover of P&O Nedlloyd by Maersk and there may be further ones in the future. For us it means tighter relationships with our customers; and as they want to reduce their costs and improve efficiency, so will we. And this is what we are in doing continuously.”