January/February 2014 World Port Development 27

c o n t a i n e ro c r s y s t e m

With manufacturers all sounding positiveabout the market place, now is the righttime to be in the business of OpticalCharacter Recognition (OCR) systems asWorld Port Development reports…

ur research has shown that across the board all manufacturers of OCR systems are sounding positive

about the current market conditions and infact are very optimistic about the future.Meta Rotenberg,VP Marketing at Certus PortAutomation told World Port Development:“Brown-fields will continue to invest in OCR.The terminals that did not yet deploy anautomated gate will do so and the ones whoalready have, will sooner or later considerdeploying OCR at the STS cranes. Green-fieldsare likely to deploy OCR from the start onall modalities. Crane OCR offers so muchpotential with the best ROI in automation.”U.S. company APS Technology Groups has‘split’ the market into operational groups or‘nodes’ - Gate, Crane and Rail. “The gatemarket is more mature given higher adoptionrates, a broader install base and acceptancefrom prospective customers,” says AllenThomas,VP Operations APS TechnologyGroup.“I expect basic gate systems to be acommodity purchase within a year given thehigh Return on Investment (ROI), reliabilityand standardisation that exists between thefew global providers.” In the short term,Thomas expects to see tremendous growthfor OCR solutions in the Crane and Railnodes as they are currently somewhat‘fragmented’ but will have a dramatic impacton operating efficiency, human safety and terminal productivity.“We expect the totalmarket to grow above a correlation line tothe growth in automated terminals, especiallyfor the crane and rail systems. Today, a suite

of these 3 OCR systems is already part of astandard ‘kit’ purchased for new automatedterminals. This will expand to those existingautomated or semi-automated terminals, aswell as to ‘brown-field’ locations,” he added.Finland-based Visy reports to have seen significant developments with rail systems,train imaging and OCR systems.Their reasonably priced technology benefits evensmaller customers and currently the companyare delivering OCR systems to severalcombi-terminals.According to Petri Granroth,Managing Director at Visy, their order book isfull and their offer base has also reached newrecords.The majority of sales and operationsare now outside of Finland as all Finnishports are operating their OCR system.

It is quite interesting to see how each company approaches the market to ‘sell’their OCR system.All of the companies consult with the terminal [the client] at anearly stage and then submits an entire business process automation plan.They alsoall agree that the OCR system is part of theentire automation process and serves business processes and automation goals.According to Thomas a key goal of anyprocess automation solution (be it OCR,RFID, DGPS, etc) is to eliminate randomevents that impact productivity and safety ata terminal. “These can be tied to gaps inprocesses, systems or even simple decisionspeople make (or don’t). In the end however,it is all tied to process improvement andeliminating the possibility of unexpectedevents or delays wherever possible,” headded. Rotenberg adds that the OCR systemcontinues to enable terminals to go to a centralised, exception based approach.As theexception handling method becomes more

enhanced and smarter, it enables the terminaloperators to monitor real errors only.“The OCR technology has now matured, thesoftware or GOS, has become the major differentiator between the vendors - smartfeatures creating visibility and transparencyacross the systems enables remote controland rapid resolution of various scenarios,”Rotenberg continued.

So, what is in store for OCR systems overthe next couple of years? According toGranroth camera technology has developedrapidly and new automation opportunities inthe market place to apply this technology willbe created.“And we [Visy] believe that damage inspection imaging gets very easy inthe near future and practically any suppliercan provide very good picture data with amodest price.Also smaller terminals can takefull advantage of new gate and crane operationautomation possibilities,” says Granroth. Inaddition,Visy is offering existing and new customers various levels of simulation. Smallscale gate operations and traffic simulation isoffered to selected customers free of chargeto assist in the design and decision process.The simulation tool offers hundreds ofparameters to create realistic data and cangreatly benefit the customer in order tomaximise capital expenditure.With over 100cranes deployed and operational and over 60on order, ranging across the globe fromChina to Panama, Certus is witnessing a continued increase in crane OCR systems.“It is important to note that many variablesdetermine a successful Crane OCR system.Some of the variables are the type of operations (e.g. front-reach, back-reach orplatform), spreader configuration, optimalposition for executing maintenance, and manymore.All of these factors go into a systemdesign, dictating the camera positions andfield of views,” said Rotenberg. Similar comments come from APS Technology whowere awarded recent contracts for STSCrane OCR system from SSA Terminals(Oakland, USA),Yilport (Turkey) and APMTerminals (2 terminals in USA).With globaleconomies improving and container trafficflowing again the need to increase efficiencyat the gates, increasing safety and productivityat the sea-land side operations is back on thewish list of the terminal operators and as aresult OCR system manufacturers have theirhands full attending to the requirements oftheir [potential] clients.That is why they are sopositive about the current market place.

Gate, Crane and Train offer opportunities for OCR manufacturers

Photo courtesy of Visy

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