Case Study: RFID Helps Container Terminal Manage Growth

By Brian Albright, Field Technologies magazine

Faced with a massive increase in container volume, the Georgia Port Authority (GPA) implemented an RFID-based automation solution at its Garden City Terminal at the Port of Savannah to track assets and containers, and manage the flow of trucks through the facility. The solution has improved efficiency at the terminal.

"Our terminal is growing in volume, and we needed to make sure we were efficient enough to service those larger volumes," says Bill Sutton, director at the GPA. Currently, the terminal is on track to significantly increase the number of 20-foot quivalent unit containers (TEUs) it processes annually. In order to accommodate that increase, the GPA needed a way to compress container stacks in the yard and manage them more efficiently, as well as manage the rubber-tiered gantry (RTG) cranes. The GPA team visited other terminals to evaluate the type of technology that could manage quick growth. "We then looked at our own operation and tried to determine the choke points and the places where production stopped or slowed down," Sutton says. "We identified those areas, and put together a request for proposal (RFP) that asked for technology that could enhance those operations."