The Durban Car Terminal has digitised more than 60% of its parking bays, improving the movement of both import and export cars in the busy yard.
The digitisation process involved fitting 7 561 parking bays with high-tech bar-coded labels which can be scanned using handheld devices, Transnet Port Terminals said on Monday.
The unique numbers on each of the parking bay labels can then be uploaded onto the company’s operating system to locate any car at the terminal yard in real time.
This is the first of two implementation phases that will eventually see the entire yard, which can park more than 12 500 vehicles at a time, all digitally recorded.
Terminal manager, Prince Manganyi, said the system would improve the efficiency of operations.
“We are now adopting a system that will do away with delays and reduce short shipments which result from the extended time taken to locate the units in the stack,” Manganyi said.
“This has been a manual process until now and managing the yard will be on a whole new level.”
He said the Durban Car Terminal had invested about R500 000 over the last ten months to implement the digitisation project.
“We relied on the skills and talents of internal resources for system development, configuration, testing, resource training and it saved us a lot of money.”
He also lauded the quality of workmanship of the implementation process, saying it is superior.
The terminal will conclude the second implementation phase before the end of the 2023/2024 financial year. The improvement is anticipated to increase the number of units handled per hour – a key performance indicator for measuring efficiency at the terminal.
