Business Process Improvement and Performance Analysis

Much of a terminal's expenditures depend on several variables that include equipment, associated labour deployment, and equipment efficiency. Over the years, TBA has performed many business process improvement studies at container terminals. A study aims to improve balance between performances, e.g. berth productivity, quay crane productivity, yard crane productivity, and truck turnaround times, and associated operational costs.

Proven Success
TBA’s studies led to significant improvements of greater than 20% of the trade-off between performance and cost. They resulted in large savings, better margins, and an improved competitive edge for the studied terminals.
TBA’s proven approach for these studies is applied in three steps: 

• Quick scan - to analyse the current situation and create diagnostics of the terminal, and to benchmark the terminal's performance-cost balance against other comparable terminals.
• Analysis of improvement measures - using simulation, emulation, and trials in operations to separate worthwhile improvements from useless ones. For this analysis, TBA developed an Improvement Matrix that enables terminals to determine the most beneficial measures.
• Implementation and continued monitoring - implementation requires change in management. In this last phase, the terminal is in the driver's seat while TBA supports it with further analysis, continous perfornmance monitoring, and training.

Do’s and Don't’s
Based on prior studies, TBA has created a best practice portfolio with do's and don'ts for terminal operations. This guide serves as a quick reference during Phase 1 - the quick scan.

If you have questions like any or all of the following ones, you may want to consider a business process improvement study from TBA.  We guarantee that it will pay off. 

• Do I have the right equipment to handle my peaks at the targeted service levels?
• Do I have the right equipment mix?
• Where are my bottlenecks to increase productivity or capacity?
• How can I reduce my unproductive moves?
• How can I reduce my costs?

and many, many more.....