16-Jul-2004

[16 July 2004 – Hong Kong] – Hongkong International Terminals (HIT) was recently recognised as a finalist in the prestigious Edelman Award for Management Science Achievement, widely recognised as the “Technology World Series”. Seven finalists were selected from a grouping of 30 top caliber organisations.

Organised by the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the purpose of the Edelman Competition is to recognize and reward outstanding examples of management science and operations research in practice. Utilising Operations Research (OR) techniques, HIT embarked on an aggressive implementation of the Decision Support System (DSS), the foundation of the terminal’s management system.

HIT employed OR in four main areas: (1) an Automated Container Grounding Strategy to maximize container yard stacking density and vessel operation productivity while minimizing traffic congestion; (2) an intelligent Internal Truck Deployment System to identify the optimal container trucks allocated to serve each quay crane while minimizing traffic congestion and maximizing quay crane and internal truck utilization; (3) an External Truck Handling System, an interactive voice response system used in conjunction with automation at entry/exit gate areas to provide greater gate efficiency and faster truck turnaround; (4) a Movement Scheduler to synchronize container movements and while balancing workload in the container yard.

Through the implementation of the DSS, HIT managed to increase capacity by 50% and reduce the unproductive movement of equipment. More importantly, HIT succeeded in further optimizing asset utilisation which avoided the construction of potentially excessive facilities.

“HIT has always put our efforts behind operation innovation to deliver superior service to customers. As a finalist in the Edelman Award, we are very pleased by the industry endorsement,” says Eric Ip, Managing Director of Hongkong International Terminals. “The large gain in our service capacity without construction of more terminals is a hallmark for the environment and our shareholders. However, we are not done yet, we need to continuously rollout our innovations to all HPH ports around the world.”