Business intelligence can make container handling even more efficient

The APM Terminals Maasvlakte II is a nearly fully automated container terminal. The company is constantly working on efficiency improvements. According to Michael van Dijk, who works at AllYourBi, the application of business intelligence software ensures that the terminal can continuously monitor and improve its processes. During the Production Process Automation (PPA) event will Van Dijk provide insight into this approach.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

In today's 'information age', data is seen as the new oil. But to be valuable, data must be well structured, says Van Dijk: "Many companies have many different systems running, both in the cloud and locally. These contain a lot of information about how companies perform. Think of customer conversations, financial data and operational data. As AllYourBi, we are able to unlock all that data to a central location and from there deliver management information and control data, and perform analyses on it."

Van Dijk explains how he applies this principle at APM: “We apply this concept at APM Terminals, among others. They have a fully automated terminal. When unloading a container from a ship, hardly any human intervention is required. A great deal of data is generated during this process. Think of the PLC control, but also the terminal operating system, the core system with which all orders are sent. And there are numerous interface systems in between, as well as cameras with OCR to determine whether the correct container has been picked. We have unlocked all these systems for APM in a data warehouse environment.”

He continues: “From this data warehouse we feed the organization with information. Every morning there is a daily report. These reports indicate what has happened in the past 24 hours and what is planned for the next 24 hours. These daily reports are fed from the warehouse environment.”

In order to achieve efficiency improvements in container handling at the APM site, information must be brought together, says Van Dijk: “How do you make such a terminal smarter? The systems at APM come from different suppliers. All these systems together indicate: what actually happens at such a terminal? How does a certain container move across the entire terminal site? Where does it remain for a long time and which part of the process takes longer compared to other processes? You want to determine: where exactly is the bottleneck. You can only answer these questions by combining the data from all the different systems. Otherwise you only have a small part of the truth. Data warehousing makes it possible to centralize all data and base your insights on that.”

Big data and corporate culture

That sounds simple, but it certainly isn't, Van Dijk emphasizes: "There are two major challenges, both for APM and in general. One: the enormous amount of data. Where exactly do you start? In the beginning, you have so much data that you can't see the forest for the trees. Once you have all the data, challenge two comes: how do you ensure that an organization will also start using it. You can make fancy graphs that show all sorts of nice things, but if they don't provide insights to take action on, what are those reports worth? Those reports won't change anything by themselves. You have to be able to realize such a change, sometimes a complete cultural change."

At APM, business intelligence is now widely used. And with results, says Van Dijk: “At automated terminals, projects are initiated based on collected data. This data has provided insight into performance. Because you want to load and unload a ship as quickly as possible. With the collected data, it is possible to determine which container movements, for example, take longer than the desired time. Then we want to know why. Based on the data, you can also link causes to it, for example that the process has been stopped for a while due to too strong a wind or as a result of a malfunction. Then you can look again at what you can do as an organization to eliminate these disruptions as much as possible.”

He continues: “This is a continuous process. And that is how new insights are created that ensure that you can move more containers per hour. Every year new targets are set, based on the data we look at, where are we? Where can we still improve to achieve the targets?”

Testing ground

APM Terminals Maasvlakte II is only about five years old. With its advancing digitalization, the terminal company can continue to innovate. And the owner is very happy with that, says Van Dijk: “APMT MVII is the most automated terminal of its kind. That makes it an incredibly interesting terminal for the APM and Maersk Group. Data is used to understand what works (and what doesn't). In a way, APM MVII became a kind of testing ground.”

Would you like to attend Michael van Dijk's lecture? Register for free for the Production Process Automation event.