Terminal Industry Committee 4.0 Established
Recognizing the need for the container terminal industry to prepare for the 4th industrial revolution and to further advance digitalization, an open group of 15 global private container terminal operators and some port equipment manufacturers has recently met in Brussels on 30thMay 2018 at FEPORT (The Federation of European Private Port Companies and Terminals) premises to discuss the current challenges for the cargo handling industry.
A press release from Port Equipment Manufacturers Association (PEMA) said that it has been acknowledged that transformations occurring in the logistics chain call for a closer technical interaction between terminals and manufacturers to engage discussions on the elaboration of industry standards that will favor the development of Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and further technological innovations for the whole sector.
FEPORT and PEMA are exploring the best areas where they could support the involvement of their members in this interesting initiative”.
The first objective of TIC 4.0 (Terminal Industry Committee 4.0) will be to delineate a corpus of definitions regarding concepts and technical terminology that are specific to the container handling industry, as most of the terminology currently used in the sector remains subjective. This first step will facilitate comparatives about technical specifications for equipment, bring about objective measures of performance of equipment and constitute an important milestone towards the elaboration of standards for the industry to achieve further efficiencies.
Both private terminal operators, members of FEPORT and port equipment manufacturers believe that proactivity is key in order to better deliver technical solutions that will warrant continuous innovation to the benefit of the overall container terminal industry, and ultimately to final consumers, under safe, sustainable and efficient conditions.
Participants have decided that TIC 4.0 will be composed of sub groups initially dealing with safety, performance of equipment, telemetric, energy, environment and procurement related definitions as a first step towards standards definitions.
The meetings will be supervised and coordinated by Frank Kho, an independent professional with decades of experience in both the container terminal and port equipment manufacturers industries.
