Dr
Stephen Beckwith

Port Product Delivery Optimisation

In the delivery of mining product to customers via port operations, significant value can be realised through a modest percentage improvement in efficiency. Port operators are challenged to investigate every opportunity to reduce cost of operations and control throughput of product to customers to generate best revenue. Optika Solutions has been investigating approaches to port product throughput optimisation via improved control of the 0 to 7 day scheduling window and further into the sub 48-hour window. We have been investigating what level of more complete port autonomy, management of assets and sensor technology is necessary to facilitate such tighter controls and gain more consistent value realisation, incorporating:

• Commodity price forecasting;
• Linking predicted commodity price to short-term scheduling;
• Live ship tracking;
• Weighted direct route optimisation; and
• Route selections.

Port operations must consider daily challenges and variabilities hence our work has included consideration of:

• New route sequence determined on equipment failure;
• Ability to run large numbers of ‘What if’ Scenarios in near real time; and
• Ease of use operators to interact with prescribed solutions or the choice to allow a prescribed schedule to run autonomously.

Our work indicates an opportunity to realised 5-8% uplift in revenue via these approaches to Port Operations.