MITSUI E&S Co., Ltd. together with Tomakomai Kuribayashi Transportation Co., Ltd. and Hino Motors, Ltd. have conducted a demonstration experiment at Tomakomai International Container Terminal.
This experiment reportedly took place from 11-13 January, under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s Port Technology Development Program, “Technical Development for Advanced Operation of Landing Trailers in Container Yards”.
In the port industry, in addition to the worsening labour shortage caused by the 2024 (logistics) problem, the ageing of workers at Tomakomai Port and other regional ports has necessitated improvements to the working environment, increased safety, and the recruitment of young workers to lead the next generation.
To address these issues, Tomakomai Kuribayashi Transportation, which manages port logistics at the Port of Tomakomai, Hino Motors, which provides vehicles, and MITSUI E&S, which builds Terminal Operation Systems (TOS), conducted a demonstration experiment to assess the sophistication of trailer operations that transport containers unloaded from ships to storage locations and from storage locations to loading locations.
Currently, drivers operate vehicles at ports using paper instructions, but in the demonstration experiment, trailers with driver assistance functions use work instructions from the terminal operation system, reducing drivers’ workload and allowing them to focus on driving safety.
This operation test was carried out during actual operations, and the availability and utility of the produced technologies were validated by verifying the following things.
In April 2024, Nippon Kaiji Kyokai (ClassNK) issued an approval in principle (AiP) for Mitsui E&S Shipbuilding Co., Ltd.’s methanol fuel delivery system.