“This methodology involves planning the discharging and loading of containers on the same bay of the vessel. So, instead of finishing a discharge across the vessel before doing a load operation, this is done simultaneously,” explains Hector Danisa, TPT’s Assistant Terminal Executive of the Western Province terminals. This internationally recognised practise lends itself to faster operation and savings by minimising empty trips for both haulers and cranes. Shipping lines also enjoy the benefits of increased productivity, vessel turnaround time and efficiency. The challenges associated with dual cycle operations include identifying suitable vessels with an even split of exports and imports and ensuring they are planned properly to facilitate this type of work, says Danisa. In addition, resourcing the terminal appropriately for quicker productivity and smarter planning of the stack could become a challenge. Early in October, dual cycle operations were piloted at the Cape Town Terminal as a collaborative initiative between TPT and container shipping line Maersk. The terminal has since worked on three vessels with the dual cycle operation, with the most recent being the Maersk Dryden container vessel on 3 November. The terminal achieved excellent performance on this vessel by reaching a GCH (container moves per gross crane hour) of 34 GCH and ship working hour (SWH) rate of 82 moves (SWH is the number of containers moved by the cranes working on a vessel in one hour, which is a key performance indicator for shipping lines to measure productivity). The performance represented a 41% improvement on the terminal’s average GCH of 24.
“Some glitches are expected in the initial period but the most important thing is that a new way of operation has been introduced and eventually only benefits can accrue from it,” said Dakalo Mboyi, Operations General Manager Maersk Western Cape. She added that the productivity improvement and other initiatives witnessed in the last few months at the terminal had been “great”.
New crane concept
The need to increase productivity with terminal operators is not something new and APM Terminals (part of the AP Moller-Maersk consortium) has been looking at ways of improving this for a long time. Although numerous options have been evaluated, such as tandem lift and dual cycle operations, there is still a need to explore other solutions. At a recent conference, Ross Clarke, APM Terminals Head of Design & Operations for New Terminals presented an important innovation to improve productivity – the development of a revolutionary new container crane concept. He explained that in late 2006, a cross-functional team of APM Terminals staff were brought together for an Innovation brain storming session, to find ways in which they [APM Terminals] could deliver a quantum leap improvement in service delivery to customers. According to Clarke, dozens of ideas were generated, nothing was off?limits, and some of the ideas really pushed the boundaries of conventional thinking. According to Clarke, even magnetic levitation which may hold some promise in the future was evaluated, but perhaps a bit more development is needed before it can be practical for terminal operations. However, after some filtering of the ideas one idea in particular stood out as having potential to deliver a quantum leap in service, and stood a reasonable chance of being “do?able.” Angelo de Jong, a young engineer working in APM Terminals Innovation Department had come up with an idea to eliminate the physical constraint imposed by the width of today’s STS cranes; which makes it impossible for two cranes to simultaneously handle containers on adjacent bays of a ship. This imposes a real physical limit on the maximum berth productivity which can be achieved with today’s STS cranes. The inability of conventional STS cranes to work on adjacent bays has to be taken into account by ship planners when planning loading and discharge sequences, to avoid crane clashes, which can occur even with very good planning if one crane works significantly faster or slower than another, or if a crane encounters a unexpected problem. Every year the world container ship fleet comprises more and more ultra?large container vessels. Only 5 years ago, the number of ships in the world with more than 10,000 TEU-capacity was zero, today there are 73 and by 2012, the number will have more than doubled to 180. Time is money for these large ships, and consistently higher berth productivity through increased crane intensity and greater planning flexibility offers potential to reduce port time for these large ships by up to 50%. In many terminals today, throughput capacity is limited by berth capacity. Increasing berth capacity by increasing crane productivity enables greater annual terminal throughput to be handled, provided there is sufficient yard capacity.
New crane design
For several months after the ‘innovation workshop’, a small team of APM Terminals engineering and operations experts developed the idea of an STS crane design where cranes ran along an elevated rail enabling crane operations in adjacent bays into an increasingly feasible concept. In its early stages, the new crane structure was quite a bit heavier than existing STS cranes. This was quite a limitation, as the heavy structure meant the new crane design would only be suitable for placement on brand new, very strong, and therefore expensive quay walls. Designing a way for the elevated crane modules to travel past the support pillars was one of many critical features of the design, and a lot of ways which don’t work were discovered on the way to finding optimum designs that will work. By mid-2008, the crane project had been extensively developed, almost exclusively by internal resources, and it was showing a lot of promise. Considering the impact of perfecting the crane design, a project with significant funding was approved late in 2008 to enable further detailed development of the design, using industry leading crane and engineering consultants. Of course, late 2008 was a time of great financial turmoil. The global financial crisis resulted in every activity in APM’s business coming under rigorous scrutiny, however the company was committed to driving innovation in the industry and that requires a long term focus – the management made the tough decision to stick with the crane development project in spite of the difficult financial situation. During the course of the project, Angelo led a team of engineering experts to further enhance the internally developed design, and prove that it would work, and that it could be built. In total 5,500 internal man hours, and more than 16,000 external man hours were devoted to reducing the weight of the crane structure, verifying structural requirements, designing control systems, and carrying out commercial analyses. Over 500 engineering drawings were produced and are now held on file. Through clever design the weight of the structure was significantly reduced, to the point where the wharf loadings are now no higher than those imposed by conventional STS cranes. This development means that it is now feasible to retro?fit the new crane design onto any relatively modern container terminal wharf. Detailed computer simulations of terminal operations were carried out, to ensure that currently available yard handling and horizontal transport systems could cope with the vastly increased rate of production possible with the new crane system. Today the revolutionary development in STS crane design internally developed by APM Terminals has been patented in 44 countries. FastNet not only eliminates the productivity limitation imposed by the width of today’s container cranes it also eliminates the constraint by mounting the individual cranes on an elevated girder, supported by massive, movable pillars. The moveable pillars are controlled by a sophisticated management system, which will ensure that the individual cranes can always reach all of the bays on the ship. Extensive computer simulations have shown that for call size
s of 3,000 moves or greater, FastNet can consistently double berth productivity from today’s average of around 130 moves per hour to more than 270 moves per hour. Simulations have also shown that FastNet can deliver berth productivity of 450 moves per hour. The concept is also scalable, whilst the support structures are obviously required from the first day of operation the designers established a process for adding cranes to the structure as needed in subsequent years. It will also generate the greatest overall supply chain benefits when implemented in import/export terminals having frequent, high volume ship exchanges. Clarke also claims that by implementing the concept at terminals where services calling have long sea voyages before or after the FastNet call maximises the opportunity to reduce ships service speed’s, thus creating opportunities to lower costs and reduce CO2 emissions.
At a glance – WPD talks to Ross Clarke, Director – New Terminals Design & Operations, APM Terminals, about a new crane concept that could reap substantial rewards.
– What are the estimated costs of the concept?
We have developed quite detailed estimates of the costs of the crane, and its associated automated yard and equipment, however we are not able to share that information.
– Has the company made any calculations on cost of the crane and productivity compared to a traditional system and if so are there any savings to be made?
Indeed, we have carried out extensive computer simulations of the crane to verify the levels of productivity which can be achieved. The computer simulations also verified that currently available automated yard systems are capable of keeping up with the high levels of production which can be achieved by the crane. Detailed commercial analyses were also carried out to determine the value created for shipping lines as a result of the substantially reduced port times made possible by Fastnet.
– What would be the weight of the new system and will it require special measures related to the quay wall to support this weight?
The wheel loads imposed by the crane are not significantly higher than the wheel loads of conventional STS cranes, making Fastnet feasible for retro-fit implementation in existing terminals having relatively modern quay wall constructions. We are unable to share the exact weight of the system.
– Are there any plans for APM Terminals to execute the concept? If not, when do you expect the company will do this and where?
We do not currently have plans to implement Fastnet at any specific location. Implementation location and time-frame will be determined largely by customer demand.
– Is APM Terminals talking to crane manufacturers?
We are not currently in discussions with any crane vendors with regard to Fastnet.