Authors:   Bernd Scholz-Reiter, Mehmet-Emin Özsahin, Anne Schweizer, Marc-André Isenberg

Abstract

Against the background of a steadily growing High & Heavy traffic at international seaport terminals and the use of ever wider encountered areas, the transparency of location and status of loadings and load carriers is particularly important for efficient warehouse management on seaport terminals. But the previously practiced manual space management of cargos abuts on its limits. Depending on the size of a seaport terminal it leads to time-consuming searches for order bound roll- trailers. Further, manual unscheduled relocations of loaded or free roll-trailer result to considerable information problems concerning the exact storing positions of roll-trailer. Automated support in the collection of movements and status changes of load carriers through IT-systems is currently not realized. Thereby, the transparency regarding the location and status of cargos and load carriers is essential for efficient inventory management at seaport terminals. To handle these information problems, the BIBA ? Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik GmbH and a German seaport-owner are designing and modelling in a research project a system that enables automated detection of location and status of load carriers on seaport terminals. The system combines innovative information and communication technologies for identification, communication and localization tasks. This paper shows how the Radio Frequency Identification technology and Global Positioning System can be integrated in the terminal processes of the roll-trailer operation cycle. It shows what potential this solution would increase in the operational processes for location and status transparency on Roll on/Roll off (Ro-Ro) terminals.