Performance measurement pays off for African ports

Against a background

of growing competition

between African ports,

performance measurement

will play an increasingly

important role as industry

puts pressure on terminal

operators to deliver.

Monitoring, comparing

and improving is the order

of the day, says Thomas

Gondermann, a consultant

from HPC Hamburg Port

Consulting.

Speaking at the

Intermodal conference

in Cape Town recently,

Gondermann said

while key performance

indicators (KPIs) were well

established systems within

ports in Africa, much

could be gained by drilling

deeper than just what was

being presented through

existing dashboards or port

regulator reports.

Involved in two East

African ports – the Port

of Mombasa in Kenya and

the Port of Dar es Salaam

in Tanzania – he said KPIs

were essential for any port

improvement while they

also impacted on long-term

management of ports.

“Both these ports have

seen significant growth

in containers over the

last few years and are

important connections to

the hinterland countries

in East Africa,” he said.

“There is understandably

a driving motivation for

the port authorities to

provide improved portwide

performance measurement

systems.”

According to

Gondermann both

Mombasa and Dar es

Salaam have seen the

benefits of this approach.

He said the consulting

process to look at

performance measurement

should always start with

a detailed analysis of

the container terminal

operations as well as

extensive stakeholder

engagement.

“There are a multitude

of processes and subprocesses

within a

terminal as well as complex

procedures with high

degrees of variability.

“An example is the gate

process for container

fetching where we found

this to be a 15- or-more

step process, with three or

four points of interaction

from the truck's point of

arrival to departure,” he

said. “The administrative

process was the driver

of the complexity for

a number of reasons,

including a culture of

mistrust between the

role-players and different

departments.”

He said this resulted

in all the procedures and

processes being doubled up.

“So the single proces of

getting a container out of

the port was shown to be

exceptionally complex.”

Gondermann said

well-introduced portwide

measurement systems

were able to identify these

bottlenecks, allowing for

corrective measures to be

set.

“It is easy to set a KPI

for a port but one must

remember that does not

give instructions on how to

achieve the results desired.

Low performance always

requires an investigation

to determine what the

problem is and then a

strategy to address that.”