What are the Pros and Cons of Port Automation and Why is it Important in Indian Container Terminal Scenario?

One of the most amazing advancements of today’s innovative technology is the integrated use of efficient port control. It works to provide great control over traffic, management, and increase capacity for multiple processes.

These are also known as smart ports that are making the India Container Services more and more prominent. Talking about the prominence, the automation process is happening globally and was recently introduced to Indian ports as well. Thus, it has a huge potential for exponential growth in the shipment trade.

The Pros of Port Automation

The port automation provides:

• Port Efficiency and Control

The overall efficiency of the port increases significantly when a port leverages the power of the technology. The manual errors deplete as the use of efficient solutions increases. It in turn helps the port to take up more ships and maintain the cap on port emissions. As a result, the environmental regulations are met.

• Save time and resources

Time and resource-saving solutions are one of the most important aspects of port automation indeed. With better solutions, the management of the ships, load and uploading process, and other processes become easy to make through. As time is saved with the processes, the resources will also be used efficiently.

• Adding long-term solutions

You see, technology is indeed the solution to the future. That means, that it will go on and on with new changes and innovations. Therefore, a port can run smoothly without any manual interference. As years will progress, the technology related to automation will also see a boost in creating better solutions for port efficiency.

The Cons of Port Automation

On the other hand, it has a few limitations as well:

• Investment Cost and Maintenance Cost

As good as the technology sounds, setting it up and keeping them going on the ports require a great amount of investment indeed. Automation is a similar solution that comes with a great setup and maintenance cost. In other words, there is a good amount of capital that will go along the needs of the port upgradation from manual to automation. 

• Cyber Security

As your business will go online, the risk of cyber attack increases. Port’s official files contain many confidential data from high-value companies. Therefore, it is very important to keep those files secure but with the huge attacks, the sensitive data might still be in the crossfire and vulnerable to being lost or get taken by the attackers.

• Setback from Workers

Adding technology to the complete port means depletion of the labor because the efficiency will be met by the tech. Thus, it will make it prone to pushback from the labor. Though they will be shifted to supervising positions, it will still be a hard time for them and they might rebel against the decision.

Key Takeaway with a Sidenote

Before we end this article, it is important to provide a little note about how this automation process can help the tracking solutions. As port automation will increase, updating the statuses of the containers and their live tracking becomes easy. The India container terminals can make use of the tech and provide a more precise movement of the containers as well.

All of these factors contribute to the fact that the cutting-edge technology of today is giving wind to the solutions of tomorrow that can make all operations more precise and efficient. 

Lastly, it provides great operability of the port. Carriage companies can also get better productivity and offer the right estimation numbers to the brands. Furthermore, the shipment tracking solutions can also benefit from better technology that provides real-time solutions to them for the connected brands to retain customers.