CONTAINER technology provider Blockshipping is working with ports in Europe to reduce the number of times a container is repositioned in a terminal through artificial intelligence (AI), reports IHS Media.
The company also signed a partnership with logistics consultant Invicta to look for opportunities to deploy the technology in Asia-Pacific region ports.
"The big problem is import containers are stacked at random. The goal is to avoid the yard shuffles. This is a simple and narrow AI use case. The more narrowly you can define the problem, the higher the success rate in solving the problem with machine learning," said Blockshipping CEO Peter Ludvigsen.
"Many of the TOSs today are legacy systems. They're struggling with a backlog of features that terminals have requested. A TOS covers all operations, but delivering AI is the pain point," said Mr Ludvigsen.
Blockshipping hopes to equip terminals with the ability to determine when a container might be picked up before the container is discharged from a vessel.
Said Blockshipping chief commercial officer Michael Nielsen: "There's no user interface, no training. It's completely unobtrusive. It's a machine-to-machine interface and the TOS is in complete control. Where you're seeing AI used is to support the decision-making, and that's what's happening here. It's still the experts making the decision, but now they have more information."
"The challenge of stacking containers in disorder has existed since the dawn of containerisation. With the maturity of AI, now we can see patterns and make predictions, to be more accurate in your stacking," said Mr Nielsen.
"One of the business values is avoiding huge congestion in the yard because you can stack your containers higher with the same efficiencies. If you have a more efficient operation, you can stack higher," said Mr Nielsen.
Blockshipping and Invicta estimate the solution can reduce more than 30 per cent of such shuffle moves.
Said Invicta CEO Ian Sehgal: "Terminals and their customers also benefit from faster truck turn time and overall improvement in efficiency."
https://www.shippingazette.com/menu.asp?encode=eng
|
Back:
Next:
