Cucumber at Woodflow 2018

14/06/2018

The Port of Tauranga is the largest and most efficient port in New Zealand. The Container Terminal offers a 24-hour, seven-day service for ship planning, ship operations, marshalling, on board stevedoring and reefer services.

As is the case with many organisations, the Port is always striving to further improve its performance, efficiency and service to customers - and this is where Cucumber comes in. Cucumber were tasked with improving planning, visibility and reporting around straddle usage, costs, maintenance and refuelling. It operates a fleet of straddle carriers, which are pieces of machinery used by drivers to pick up containers and move them around the wharf.

The Container Terminal were also keen to understand driver performance in order to enhance straddle utilisation and improve their health and safety metrics.

Cucumber provided the thinking required to identify the key requirements of the system. This included analysis of which KPIs would be of the most value to the Port and a technical analysis on how the data would be gathered, and the value this would add.

From here we went to Proof of Concept stage. The PoC provided valuable technical information on how aspects of the solution should operate. It also revealed what not to do. By catching these successes and failures early, the design of the solution was tweaked prior to entering the pilot stage.

The pilot incorporated all the information and beneficial lessons gathered in the PoC, and solidified the solution into a production ready state. It also incorporated valuable feedback from users, regarding the user interfaces and user experience with the system.

This solution for Port of Tauranga was developed using Agile methodology. Customer feedback is an integral part of this process, to ensure the solution stays closely aligned to the customer goals. This allowed the project deliverables to be continually checked against the initial requirements to ensure they were being met, or to validate why an initial requirement was no longer applicable.

By developing a real-time dashboard view of straddle usage, along with an integrated source of information for planning and reporting purposes, the Port of Tauranga is able to make a number of improvements in their operations. Reduced maintenance costs, safer and more effective operations of straddles and the ability to evaluate driver performance are the priorities. They will also be able to improve accuracy and effectiveness in managing straddles in real-time within spatial zones, and deliver bottom-line financial improvements from enhanced operational efficiency.

Cucumber specialises in the below products and services and have a skilled team of professionals to find the right technology solutions for the problem at hand – if you’d like to learn more about what we do or how we can help increase efficiency in your organisation, get in touch.

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