Source: Knatz G., Notteboom T. & Pallis A.A. (2023). Container Terminal Automation: Assessment of Drivers and Benefits.Maritime Policy and Management, 51(6), 1252-1276.
A wide range of factors contribute to the decision to automate a terminal. In addition to purely economic and technical factors, institutional factors and dynamics in stakeholder relations also significantly impact terminal automation.
The most important factor driving the decision to automate among terminal managers who have proceeded with automation has been the anticipated improvement in safety. Other key drivers have included reducing per-container unit handling costs, stabilizing performance variability, and controlling labor costs. Slightly lower in the hierarchy of the drivers towards automation have been the capacity to sustain continuous 24/7 operations, the removal of human-induced disruptions (e.g., illness, labor disputes), improvements in the ability to accommodate larger vessels, the mitigation of emissions, and the acceleration of truck turnaround times. By comparison, motivations such as positioning the terminal as a technological showcase, serving as a test-bed for emerging technologies, or alleviating constraints linked to limited land availability have been relatively peripheral.
Given that it remains a comparatively recent and still-diffusing phenomenon within the container port system, the impacts of automation are not yet fully understood. Empirical evidence from early adopters suggests that certain benefits have been systematically underestimated. These include the degree of labor cost reduction, the effective elimination of labor-related disruptions, environmental gains associated with lower emissions, and improvements in truck turnaround efficiency. However, in the case of the reduced labor cost, the difference between expectations and realized benefits is marginal. A high observed underestimation of the benefits of automation as a test-bed for new technologies reveals that the learning curve and innovation trajectory linked to an automated terminal project lead to a much stronger positive outcome than initially anticipated by the developer.
Conversely, other expected outcomes have been overestimated, most notably the scale of reductions in unit handling costs, the decline in operational variability, the extent to which automation enables continuous operations, efficiency gains in managing mega-ships, and its contribution to meeting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) set by ocean carriers.
To date, the benefits that have most closely aligned with initial expectations are those related to enhanced safety (i.e., the factor that tops the hierarchy towards automation) and the ability to overcome spatial constraints for the expansion of operations (i.e., this has nevertheless not been a factor in the adoption of automation).