Tilbury Container Services: Technology for efficiency

Source: Supply Chain Digital

Date :10/12/2007 09:33:29

At Tilbury Container Services efficiency is vital, which is why the company has brought in two radical new systems to improve its operations and increase capacity.

Written By David Hughes and produced by Alex Smith

Efficiency is at the heart of the concept of container shipping. The standard-size boxes that stack have transformed the international economy, allowing far more mechanisation of loading and unloading, a greater capacity that is far faster and cheaper and all using a smaller workforce at the ports that handle them. But like any efficient system that has been around a while, there are always opportunities to take it another step. Tilbury Container Services has made just such a move.

“The way that the haulage industry in the UK works, the way that trucks turn up at ports, has always been very difficult to predict,” says Tabare Dominguez, Business Development Manager for TCS. “There are peaks that are difficult to foresee, so we are now introducing a Vehicle Booking System or VBS that will add predictability to the arrival pattern of vehicles.

It gives hauliers slots for delivery or collection, which they can book on the Internet. From now on, they must have a booking, which will guarantee that we will deal with them within the hour. It won’t usually take that long – our turnaround time anyway is about 33 minutes (from gate to gate), which is very competitive in the industry, but we hope to improve that even further and eliminate delays and waiting tine before the trucks are serviced.

The new system will also allow us to know what the demand will be and so we will be able to resource accordingly. It’s all about improving the efficiency and service we provide to all our customers...

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