E-PORT. Improving efficiency of Finnish port community by intelligent systems Final report of the Mobile Port project

摘要

The management of port-related supply chains is challenging due to the complex andheterogeneous operations of the ports with several actors and processes. That is why theimportance of information sharing is emphasised in the ports. However, the informationexchange between different port-related actors is often cumbersome and it still involvesa lot of manual work and paper. Major ports and port-related actors usually have advancedinformation systems in daily use but these systems are seldom interoperablewith each other, which prevents economies of scale to be reached. Smaller ports andcompanies might not be equipped with electronic data transmission at all.This is the final report of the Mobile port (MOPO) project, which has sought ways toimprove the management and control of port-related sea and inland traffic with the aidof ICT technologies. The project has studied port community systems (PCS) usedworldwide, evaluated the suitability of a PCS for the Finnish port operating environmentand created a pilot solution of a Finnish PCS in the port of HaminaKotka. Further,the dry port concept and its influences on the transportation system have been explored.The Mobile Port project comprised of several literature reviews, interviews of over 50port-related logistics and/or ICT professionals, two different kinds of simulation modelsas well as designing and implementing of the pilot solution of the Finnish PCS. Theresults of these multiple studies are summarised in this report. Furthermore, recommendationsfor future actions and the topics for further studies are addressed in the report.The study revealed that the information sharing in a typical Finnish port-related supplychain contains several bottlenecks that cause delays in shipments and waste resources.The study showed that many of these bottlenecks could be solved by building a portcommunity system for the Finnish port community. Almost 30 different kinds of potentialservices or service entities of a Finnish PCS were found out during the study. Thebasic requirements, structure, interfaces and operation model of the Finnish PCS werealso defined in the study. On the basis of the results of the study, a pilot solution of theFinnish PCS was implemented in the port of HaminaKotka. The pilot solution includesa Portconnect portal for the Finnish port community system (available athttps://www.portconnect.fi) and two pilot applications, which are a service for handlingthe information flows concerning the movements of railway wagons and a service forhandling the information flows between Finnish ports and Finland-Russian border. Thestudy also showed that port community systems can be used to improve the environmentalaspects of logistics in two different ways: 1) PCSs can bring direct environmentalbenefits and 2) PCSs can be used as an environmental tool in a port community.On the basis of the study, the development of the Finnish port community systemshould be continued by surveying other potential applications for the Finnish PCS. It isalso important to study if there is need and resources to extend the Finnish PCS to operatein several ports or even on a national level. In the long run, it could be reasonable toclarify whether there would be possibilities to connect the Finnish PCS as a part of BalticSea wide, European-wide or even worldwide maritime and port-related network inorder to get the best benefit from the system