Within most terminals across the United States, pandemic-related issues have compounded to make terminal operators’ jobs even more difficult. The delays, staffing and equipment shortages, and other related concerns have tested our existing systems and revealed flaws that hinder organizational success.
The best way to overcome these challenges, reduce bottlenecks, and ensure success is to invest in a solution that provides better visual planning tools, which can help increase efficiency without forcing your staff to learn new processes or disrupt your existing operations.
Today, we’ll discuss how Tideworks’ vessel and yard planning solution Spinnaker can be used to help terminal operators and managers maximize efficiency, leading to better overall terminal yard planning and management.
What is Spinnaker?
Spinnaker is Tideworks’ planning management solution designed with a highly graphical interface to help facilitate container move planning. When users log on, they can see their site’s entire container equipment inventory represented as icons in their current positions. Then, they can use the solution’s sophisticated business insights and integrated tools to plan each container’s new position.
With Spinnaker, users can:
- Quickly browse through their yard
- Search for data and manipulate lists
- Establish or alter a yard strategy
- Manage gate deliveries
- View the upcoming schedule for vessels and rail
- Schedule vessel operations
- Plan containers
The Value of Graphical Planning Tools
Having Spinnaker’s features at their fingertips can help terminal operators visualize how space is being used in their terminal yard, and on each vessel. Within each vessel, they can create a picture of what’s onboard down to a single container, then use the tools to quickly plan them to optimal positions in the yard.
Later on, they can develop a plan to determine how each container will be picked up and arranged on trucks that take them from the yard through the gate.
Using this information makes it simpler to plan moves between locations, and better utilize available resources allowing operators to enhance productivity and save money.
How Terminals of All Sizes Can Use Spinnaker
One of the most valuable features of Spinnaker is that it can be used by terminals of all sizes.
Spinnaker has been deployed by operators with varying size fleets of container handling equipment, by those who are more or less automated, and by those working with or without an existing dispatch system. In some cases, terminal operators may require a full-service TOS, or they may already have tools they love that just need a bit more support.
Spinnaker can be deployed in concert with the rest of the Tideworks suite or implemented independently. It can also integrate with a third-party TOS, gate, or dispatch system. Many of our users consider it the heart of our product suite, but it’s also the most interchangeable of our products due to its compatibility with different terminal scenarios.
The 5 Most Important Benefits of Spinnaker
Spinnaker is an indispensable tool for terminals because it gives operators the power to reduce the time needed to plan critical moves, access accurate and real-time terminal inventory, and eliminate stowage errors. It can also help terminal operators avoid costly fees from errors, optimize their yard space, increase cargo volume, and enable any yard decking strategy their terminal requires.
Here are five critical benefits prized by Spinnaker users.
1. Powerful and Intuitive Planning Tools
If terminal tools or software aren’t intuitive, it can cause more problems than it solves for busy terminal operators. After all, no one wants to invest in a planning tool that purports to be helpful but actually takes months to learn.
That’s why we’ve worked hard to ensure our planning tool is both functional and easy to use. Here are some areas where you can see that in action.
Vessel Planning Tools
Better vessel and container booking and planning are central components of creating a more organized and efficient yard. Using our booking information, users can quickly pre-stow a vessel to ensure they have space available to accommodate every export container without having to work through the entire planning process.
This shorthand method of blocking out a ship with containers organized by port or other essential criteria serves as a guide and helps to populate downstream tools with relevant information that otherwise would have been uploaded manually.
Vessel dual cycling is another valuable feature of Spinnaker’s vessel planning tools. With these features, there’s no need to do load operations and discharge operations separately. By taking both moves into account, you can interchange loads and unloads, and ensure the space is ready when needed. This helps to relieve traffic congestion and leads to higher productivity.
Yard Planning Tools
The yard planning tools native to Spinnaker are a significant benefit for all terminal operators. Using these tools allows operators to designate the ideal spot for containers entering the terminal, which helps reduce time-consuming and costly terminal convenience moves.
In addition to the smart graphical interface that allows for a clear view of your yard, algorithms built into Spinnaker can help you select the best picks, making it more straightforward to create a plan and avoid potential yard bumps.
Rail Planning Tools
Even operators working on a marine terminal can utilize practical and intuitive rail planning tools for on-dock rail. These tools let users define rail yards and tracks in terms of lengths and heights, and also assist in the splitting of trains.
Using these rail planning tools, terminal operators can plan for incoming and outgoing trains, move railcars from track to track, and direct every move for more efficient intermodal operations.
They can also automate the stowage of rail cars with the push of a button once they’ve modeled their terminal yard to define all logical storage positions.
2. Rich, but Simple User Interface
Within the past few years, our team has made a considerable effort to modernize Spinnaker to match user expectations for functionality and experience. This included updating its user interface and how it responds to customer queries, as well as mirroring the contemporary functionality we see in search engines and common operating systems like Windows.
Our goal was to create a solution with improved functionality that’s not only more powerful but also easier to use. Here are some places where you can see our simple yet functional user interface in action.
Admin Console
Integrating a more robust and easy-to-use UX and UI allowed us to rework how Spinnaker is organized, particularly the administrative features. In this newest update, we’ve evolved the admin console into a nested menu with a simple search box to help users quickly zero in on the option they’re looking for or the specific settings that need to change.
Container Equipment Visualization
Spinnaker uses color-coded container info to effortlessly plan vessels and modify operations to meet customer demand. Users can determine their own system for color-coding vessels, with options that include:
- Status (empty or full)
- Line operator
- Size
- Type
- Port
From there, users can choose from more than half a dozen other categories, depending on the specific purpose.
In addition to color-coding, users can also utilize container icons to help show other information like container height, size, type, length, or status. These options are helpful in planning moves since it offers more information than typical icons can provide.
Tools That Offer More Functionality with Less Training
Another recently implemented change is allowing users to open tools using their name or keywords. This helps offer greater functionality and data accessibility without the need for increased or additional training.
Instead of learning where new tools are located or having to ask an administrator to “unlock” features, users can type the name of a feature or related keywords into the search box to quickly find new tools. This makes it even simpler to find and use these functionalities.
Easily Customizable Workspace for Each User
Your workspace in Spinnaker can be personalized to your particular needs and common job activities. Everyone uses the application in different ways, so by personalizing your workspace, it becomes easy to use, which leads to increased trainability.
Additionally, customizable user rights allow two people with two different sets of user rights to control what the application looks like to them. This removes excess and gives each user precisely the tools they need with no extraneous information or access.
3. Full-Featured and Versatile
Spinnaker offers advanced features and tools designed to support all operational modes, including yard, rail, vessel, and gate. Plus, these features don’t just work in isolation. It’s easy to use Spinnaker in concert with Tideworks’ TOS and product suite, as well as third-party integrations and TOSs.
These advanced tools include support for automated stacking cranes and integrations with various Differential Global Positioning Systems (DGPS), mounted mobile display units, and other handheld devices. Here are some of the planning automation and operational features that make Spinnaker so versatile.
Automatic Set-Asides
Another valuable feature of Spinnaker is that it offers terminal managers and operators the ability to control container placement exceptions, helping them avoid rehandles and unproductive and unbillable set-asides. When operators can improve how they plan for the location of each container, these set-asides and other inconvenient and time-consuming moves will start to occur less often.
However, set-asides are sometimes simply unavoidable. To help automate and improve the process, we’ve designed an algorithm within Spinnaker that determines the nearest convenient location for a set-aside where the container can remain the longest. This helps limit terminal convenience moves that take up valuable time and money.
4. Robust, Personalized User Support
While Spinnaker is intuitive and user-friendly, we believe the best way to maximize its potential is to use it often and familiarize yourself with the various features and tools that can make your job simpler. To make this easier, we’re always here to help.
Our support and relationships with users are among the best things about working with a Tideworks product. Our entire client services department undergoes cross-training and, as a result, can offer first-tier support across a variety of specialties. This includes providing support for upgrades, installations, and any other event across the product’s lifecycle.
Our Client Solutions Specialists
Talking to a client solutions specialist is often the best way for terminal operators to learn how to solve their unique operational problems through Spinnaker’s software processes. Our CSS agents are adept at helping pair the software’s capabilities with our customers’ needs in a way that offers users viable workflows and processes.
Our specialists can also help translate real-world use cases into improvements, new product features, and better solutions for our customers. Every individual working on our client services team is a product subject matter expert, well-versed in solution features and familiar with their different configurations and practical terminal applications.
Whenever we release new features, our client services team makes it a priority to understand how they work, so they can aid users in implementing them correctly. We often field calls from users who are eager for our help in better utilizing specific functionalities.
If customers have a question about a novel application of one of our tools, our client solutions specialists work with them closely to articulate the business case and requirements, then submit actionable feature requests based on their needs.
This close relationship ensures that Spinnaker’s features will always be designed and implemented with our customers’ needs in mind.
5. Customized Data Reporting
Ultimately, the goal of using a sophisticated data-driven tool to organize and run your terminal operations is to make your life easier. The best way to do this is with custom data reporting that works for your needs.
One of the most critical functions we’ve focused on in creating Spinnaker is customized reports or lists. These lists give users the tools they need to invoke and organize any data, then share it widely.
While Spinnaker primarily functions as a planning tool, the search tools make it simple to isolate and filter any type of container using hundreds of search parameters. These parameters are also configurable so that users can customize their appearance and order depending on their needs. The list and find features are central to what makes our customized data reporting so useful.
List and Find Tools
Query, filter, and export are the three critical functions you need to make your data more accessible. With the list and find tools in Spinnaker, it’s easy to view and recap the data you need. It’s also easy to see default lists like the decking request list, pickup request list, and exception lists at the touch of a button.
Users can also name and save individual searches privately or publicly for easy access. When a user runs a search, the system presents the results in a grid, making it easy to sort through, drag and drop, then build out any custom report. From there, they can be printed, exported, and saved.
Ad-hoc reporting also gives access to any data using the list tool. You can look up and isolate equipment history, bookings, gate transactions – virtually any data you can think of.
Improve Your Terminal Planning with Spinnaker
Making large-scale improvements to your terminal not only requires more data but also comprehensive tools and systems that can take information and offer useful and practical insights. If you aren’t working with technology or solutions that provide this capability, it’s easy to find yourself falling behind.
With Spinnaker’s new and improved functionalities, including the comprehensive search and report-creation tools, it’s easier for terminal operators to simplify how they plan, organize, and staff their terminal. This allows them to process vessels and containers faster, reducing vessel turn time and increasing the capacity of cargo that can flow through their terminal.
Contact us today to learn what Spinnaker can do for your terminal.