Port and terminal operators are experiencing growing complexity in the form of rapidly accelerating throughput demands. These challenges are occurring during a time of increasing calls to reduce environmental impacts and achieve greater sustainability, while at the same time maintaining safety and improving resilience. These drivers are in conflict, yet experience has shown that port operation optimization can increase throughput by 10% to 20% using a data-driven asset management approach to provide substantial return in all of these operational areas through a coordinated approach.
The entire port ecosystem — from the harbor to inland intermodal terminals located hundreds of miles away — is under pressure to modernize. Port authorities, terminal operators and logistics providers are seeking to optimize performance and reliability of assets by applying a holistic capital planning framework, from project inception through ongoing maintenance and replacement decisions as well as considerations for reuse and recycling.
Effectively managing asset life cycles requires clarity and accuracy in maintaining asset inventories, conditions and requirements, as well forecasting future needs. This information must be communicated across the organization and to other stakeholders.
To meet these challenges, each port/terminal operator must utilize a framework for managing assets and consider how to leverage data in the approach. This framework should consider all aspects — from people and culture to employing technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), geospatial systems, machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) and advanced analytics algorithms — to transform work processes and practices.
An asset management strategy must align to the core values of the business, be they safety, throughput or quality. Ideally, this strategy embraces continuous improvement, which means changing the way that things are done to make improvements. But if ports and terminals are continually changing, the need to understand the impacts of those changes, communicate the changes and remove barriers becomes a core competency. This is what management of change involves. It is focused on technical changes and proactive elimination of risk associated with change. Change management, on the other hand, is focused on people and — as noted by the Institute of Asset Management — people do asset management. In a world where the rate of change is increasing, both the management of change and change management will require more attention to achieve port optimization. In short, value comes from what gets used, not from what gets designed or built. Asset management is the coordinated activity of an organization to realize value from assets and data, and information management is a key piece of this.