Reduction of exceeding the guaranteed service time for external trucks at the DCT Gdańsk container terminal using a six sigma framework

What is it about?

The research and measurements of the container terminal gate operations processes – external truck service time i.e. the truck turnaround time is essential to analyse the container terminal process efficiency. Truck turnaround time is one of the major factors that determine the quality of container terminal services for its customers who take it into account while deciding how many container volumes they will handle through the container terminal. To optimize increased road gate traffic and boost gates throughput, and as a consequence, encourage more volume and increase customer satisfaction, Deepwater Container Terminal Gdańsk Sp z o.o. (DCT Gdańsk) reorganized and modernized the Gate Operations. Gate reorganization and modernization includes streaming line traffic at the gates, external parking lot optimization, implementation of dedicated supporting software and installation of dedicated CCTV cameras to provide 24h life view. During gates development, the external truck service times data were collected and analysed. The obtained materials concerned the measurement of the average truck turnaround time before and after the implementation of the improvements. This paper proposes a Six Sigma methodology aiming to reduce the average amount of exceeded guaranteed service time for external trucks at DCT Gdańsk via dosing the gate activities, in particular IN-Gate entry process of trucks carrying import/export/transit containers. The DMAIC methods along with the SIPOC chart, cause and effect diagram, scatterplot, benchmark and brainstorming and finally multi-voting tools are used as analysis tools in this research.

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