Case: 3 – Bharat Seaports Authority

Submitted in Partial fulfillment of:
Business Policy and Strategic Management

UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF:
Dr. Arvind Sudarshan
Department of Management

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BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY&SCIENCE
PILANI, RAJASTHAN-333031

Submitted by:

Neha Vij 2011H149203

Bharat Seaports Authority

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

India is endowed with an extensive coastline of 7,517 km. There are 12 major ports under the jurisdiction of the union government and 187 non major ports spread across nine coastal states regulated by the respective State Government. However, only 48 non-major ports are handling cargo. While major ports handle approx 73% of total cargo traffic, non-major ports account for the balance 27 %( in 1996-97, the share was around 10%). Container service provides seems to be the safest and most economic mode of seaway transportation. Hence is also became the fast growing mode of cargo. Container traffic in India is mainly handled by the major ports at Calcutta, Madras, Cochin, Mumbai and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT)*.

Trans-Shipment Procedure:

A berth for the ship container is allocated 2 or 3 days before its arrival, based on the ship’s characteristics, berth characteristics, marine considerations etc. As soon as a ship is berthed, the quay cranes are lowered to lift imported cargo and place them on the chassis/trailers of trucks, which carry the containers to their designated stack yards. Here yard cranes pick them and stack them in their designated slots. A quay crane is positioned every 75 meter of wharf length. Containers for import, export, and trans-shipment are stacked separately in the stack yard. Each quay crane can perform on an average 25 moves (full cycles) per hour. Currently, 4-5 trucks are being assigned to each quay crane, generating separate truck queues for each crane. The turnaround time of a truck depends on the quay side and the yard side operations. A yard crane has to load an export container only onto the specified truck attached to the quay crane loading for that specific destination. In the case of containers meant for trans-shipment, the operations may take even longer, as the exact positioning of the container in the stack yard also depends on its next destination. This results in a certain amount of idling of the quay cranes, yard crane, and the trucks.

Limitations:

The efficiency of the port is often recognized by the ships turnaround time. This ship turnaround time is often determined majorly by: i. Time for documentation processes and procedures, ii. Efficiency in loading and unloading operations
IT applications such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) can expedite the documentation process and procedures to some extent. The major objective of Bharat seaports authority is reduce the turnaround time of the ships by reduce the idle time of the quay cranes, yard crane, and the trucks. This idle time is caused due to a variety of reasons like improper berth allocation, yard planning, stowage planning and logistics planning.

PROBLEM STATEMENT:

• The management of Bharat Seaports Authority aims to reduce the turnaround of the vessels calling on Indian ports • At that time India was handling only 1.2% of total container ports. Hence, steps had to be taken to attract and handle more container traffic.

*Data is collected from Deloitte’s Background paper on Port connectivity in Gujarat 2009.

DECISION CRITERIA:

1. To reduce the ship turnaround time by optimally utilizing the port resources and thereby improves competitiveness and provides efficient and effective services at low price.
2. To manage the future container traffic of the Indian ports both effectively and efficiently.
3. To improve the documentation process and efficiency in loading and unloading operations for coordinating the operations of quay cranes, yard cranes and trucks.

The ship routing and berth operations should be coordinated to decrease the complexity of the operations substantially. The shipping companies can operate multiple cargo terminals in different locations, their terminals often serve as consolidation facilities where containers can be unloaded from one feeder vessel and reloaded onto another one. The shipping company should consolidate their containers by first unloading them from various vessels and then reloading them onto a single vessel, and have that single vessel carry them to a public terminal. They can also be used as container consolidation facilities so that containers can be unloaded from one feeder vessel and reloaded onto another vessel. Because the large public container terminals only accept orders of certain minimal cargo volume, it is quite common for the shipping company to consolidate their containers by first unloading them from various vessels and then reloading them onto a single vessel, and have that single vessel carry them to a public terminal. More research should be devoted to studying the planning of fleet sizes and the scheduling of ships. A considerable amount of research on the allocation of berths at container terminals to minimize the waiting time of ships or to maximize the utilization of berths should also be done.

RECOMMENDED SOLUTION:

All India ports had a TEUs throughput of 1.2% of global traffic. Mumbai leading in the number of container vessels and tonnage handled. However, the average turnaround time in days for Mumbai is high with 6.76 days. This time can be reduced by increasing the number of both quay cranes. There is also a need to increase the number of yard cranes to handle the exports. • The Mumbai port has more imports than exports. Hence by increasing the quay cranes, the efficiency of importing increases. This decreases the turnaround time at least by a day or two and attracts more container ships. • As there is a steady increase in container traffic by 1% year-on-year basis, there is a need to adapt to the new practices like electronic berth planning and better operations on the port. These should be applied on all the major ports. • Cochin had least turnaround time. Hence traffic could be diverted to this port to best utilize the facilities and also increase the efficiency of the other heavily populated ports.