Automation creates ‘safer, more efficient’ workplace
A quite revoluion as Australia’s first fully automated international containers arrive at Webb Dock East in the Port of Melbourne.
At Webb Dock East in the Port of Melbourne, a quiet revolution has been under way since January 2017. Australia’s first fully automated international container terminal has brought huge change to the shipping industry.
The Victoria International Container Terminal (VICT), which is capable of handling the equivalent of at least one million shipping containers a year, is one of the most automated — and thus, advanced — container terminals in the world. VICT uses 20 automatic stacking cranes (ASCs), which handle the interchanges between trucks and the container stacking blocks, both on the land side and the dock side.
There are 11 automatic container carriers (ACCs) on-site, to enable driverless container delivery, using sensors, AI and the “Internet of Vehicles.”
The $650m facility also includes five ship-to-shore (STS) cranes, designed to lift loads of up to 65 tonnes: these sit on a 660-m berth and are operated 1.2km from the wharf through a fibre-optic cable link.
When a truck arrives on-site, optical character recognition technology (OCR) scans the licence plate and sends that information to the terminal operating system, which identifies and validates the transaction and tells the truck driver where to proceed. When the truck is in the right area, the driver scans an identification card that interfaces with the crane.
The crane has been “told” from the OCR gates that that container is now on-site, and because the truck driver has pre-booked online, the terminal’s system knows which container he’s coming to get, so the crane is ready to load it on to the truck. A sensor will indicate if a truck is driven too close to the crane, which then automatically stops the operation. Not surprisingly, turnaround times for trucks visiting the terminal are the fastest achieved anywhere in Australia.
It’s automation on steroids, and it has all the implications that automation has had in other industries: efficiency, a safer working environment — and an impact on employment.
“As with a lot of automation, there are less of the older, more manual jobs, but potentially more of the higher-value and more technically focused jobs that are behind the automation processes,” says Mike Gallacher, chief executive at Ports Australia.
“As with other industries, we’re seeing new jobs on the back of the new technology being created.”
Automating tasks on the waterfront is nothing new, says Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) national secretary Paddy Crumlin.
“It’s been going on since the introduction of containerisation, and the MUA has been co-operating in that process for half a century through negotiation and productivity trade-offs,” Crumlin says.
We have to remember, he adds, that much of the remaining work is labour-intensive and not able to be automated, he says, such as lashing and unlashing containers.
“It’s not possible to automate the bulk and general industry, which moves items such as heavy machinery, agricultural products, timber, and non-containerised goods,” he continues.
“In a highly productive industry, we believe the right balance between automation and human operations has been achieved.”
All aspects of the port and shipping industries are being assessed for automation, with ramifications for many roles.
“Technology does allow you to do a lot more, but the focus is always on making things safer and more efficient, not taking away jobs,” says Rod Nairn, chief executive at Shipping Australia.
“If we look at tug operations, and pilot operations, and the actual master mariners on the bridge, technology and automated systems give you so much information and control these days that it is a completely different industry, but there is still a very big role for human skills to oversee it all.”
Nairn gives the example of pilots, whose skill and local knowledge is considered essential.
“It frustrates me, because in nearly 50 years in the maritime industry, the two most dangerous things I’ve seen are one, people entering confined and unventilated spaces on ships, and two, pilots getting on and off ships,” he says.
“Do we do that with helicopters instead of ladders up the side? There are some ships that are not suitable for doing helicopter transfer, or the pilots aren’t comfortable with doing the transfer that way. We could potentially use remote pilotage, because the technology certainly exists such that you can see exactly what’s happening on the ship, and instantly get all the readouts of the information you need to pilot the vessel.
‘Technology does allow you to do a lot more, but the focus is always on making things safer and more efficient, not taking away jobs’
“It doesn’t take away the pilots’ skills, or the requirements for the pilot, but it puts them in a shore-side simulation-type system where they have this all-round 3D view and they can operate remotely. But the pilots argue that their skill sets need to be physically present.”
Brent Warhurst, master mariner and Eastern Area president of the Australian Maritime Officers Union (AMOU), says these are difficult debates, that a lot of industries are having.
“Definitely the technology gets better and better, but for us, the philosophy is still that the technology assists the human operations,” Warhurst says.
“Certainly, you automate what can be automated, but we think that the role of technology is to help humans make decisions.”
Warhurst gives the example of unmanned tugs, which are being trialled in some ports around the world; and as usual, billed as greatly improving efficiency and safety.
“That’s a great example, because there’s certainly a role for that — an autonomous tug could be very useful for pushing on one side, or holding the ship in a certain position,” he says.
“But we think that it’ll only be one of the tugs: you wouldn’t be able to get away with all of them, because you’d need that human operator to steer very quickly if the situation demanded it.
“Everyone gets very excited by technology, but we think that on the water, there is always potential for situations to develop very quickly, in which you simply can’t replace years of experience and gut feel.”