Automation messes up the flow of illegal drugs. The big stuff does not come in a backpack but in container ships/trucks.
In LATAM, dock workers make sure this goes undetected. I know of an IE who was championing a dock worker scheduling optimization algo, typical Operations Management stuff. Dude was killed.
I'd like to think that this kind of things do not happen here. But every time I've thought along those lines, I've been mistaken. It's just happens at a different scale.
This interpretation is at odds with what happens in Rotterdam aka cocaine ground zero (or is it Antwerp now?). It's the most automated port in the world. They still routinely bust port insiders who help crooks there.
How would automation mess up the flow of drugs. Wouldn't it make it easier, if no human was there to take a peek?
Or are there ghost containers on ships, which are filled with drugs and not part of the manifest, that an automated system would flag but people with greased hands know to let it through?
Salacious claims like this should always be backed up with verifiable info. In the absence of such, it is reasonable to assume inaccuracies from chains of communication or even deception–especially when coming from an anonymous source. Did you even know the guy?
The metric used in this article is likely different than the metric that the port operators care about. The article was measuring productivity by turnaround time for ships. The port operator probably cares most about operating costs. Excess turnaround time for ships is a cost born by the shipping line (and consumer), and it is unlikely to affect whether people choose a given port because geographic concerns dominate most.
The goal of the port operator is explicitly to lay off longshoremen so they don't have to pay inflated salaries. It is diametrically opposed to the union's goals in this regard, hence the dispute. The article largely acknowledge that automation succeeds in reducing the number of longshoremen required, which is its actual purpose. (It did question whether the reduced labor costs actually pay for the capital investment required, but didn't give any numbers. Since capital investment is a one-time cost but wages are a recurring cost, this calculation needs to be subjected to discounted cash flow analysis, which also requires that an interest rate be specified.)
The article notes that many automated ports are poor performers productivity-wise and presents this as evidence that automation doesn't increase productivity. However, it stands to reason that ports already suffering from low productivity would be the most inclined to adopt automation. I think it's safe to say automation is not a silver bullet that will cause a port to jump from the bottom to the top of the rankings, but that doesn't mean these ports wouldn't be worse off without the improvements they've made.
Also while the article champions various process improvements to make ports more efficient that don't strictly require automation, it's not an either/or scenario. Implementing automation can make it easier to implement process improvements like scheduling, and process improvements which reduce variability make automation less expensive and more capable. It makes sense to pursue both in parallel.
So about truck appointment systems, you should probably be thankful those are NOT the norm. Generally speaking container terminal operators and transport companies are antagonistic to eachother, since they are NOT in a direct business relationship. The truck transporter (or rail/barge transport companies) are hired either by the shipper directly, or by the shipping company, depending on whether you book a door-to-door or a port-to-port transport. This is also known as carrier haulage and merchant haulage. The container terminal generally works for the shipping line.
Long story short: the container terminal will always opt to please their customer (shipping line) over their non-customer (trucking companies). Truck appointment systems are usually used to force transporters to smooth out peak times not in the name of efficiency, but rather to lower the amount of dock workers the container terminal needs to hire. The truck companies generally end up footing the bill for this, both in increased workload and in detention/demurrage costs because they can't get their containers out and back in time. This money goes directly into the pocket of both the shipping line and container terminals as this is typically something they make heavy profits on.
Be very wary when container terminals and shipping lines start to push for centrally mandated appointment systems. They are much more consolidated than hinterland transport operators. I'm all for increasing efficiency but let's not even further increase market power for shipping lines and container terminals please.
Why aren't there more US ship builders? It seems like there ought to be room for a profitable business, given that they have a huge advantage enshrined in federal law.
It seems to me that comparing Chinese ports to American ports is comparing very different things: I would imagine that the vast majority of the traffic at a Chinese port is export traffic while at an American port it’s import traffic.¹ Furthermore, thanks to centralized decision making, the interface between surface traffic and ship in China will inherently be more efficient than the same interface in the U.S. What I’m wondering is how do U.S. ports compare to, say, Europe or Canada where the situation would be more comparable.
⸻
1. In fact, it occurs to me that loading the ship should be faster/more efficient than unloading as there’s not necessarily any reason to do any sorting beyond which ship a container goes on at the export point, while at the import point, there needs to be more direction of getting containers onto individual trucks and trains.
That's not true in my experience. Loading outbound cargo is way more complex, since the stowage plan of the ship dictates where each container goes. Theoretically a lot of containers can be swapped as long as weight is similar, the container type is identical, and the port of discharge is the same. In practice it's still incredibly complex compared to just unloading stuff. While you may need to do less 'digging' on shore, the nitty gritty of the actual operations are way more complex than throwing some boxes ashore.
Import cargo is annoying in that it is mostly random access on pickup. For pickup by train, barge, or feeder ship, a vast minority, you typically don't have cargo manifests until a day or two before pickup at best, so in practice this is also random access-ish. The customs processes are also trickier.
My experience is mostly in Rotterdam and Antwerp, and I'd say the problems in the US probably don't have to do much with automation. Rotterdam and Antwerp have very different automation levels at the biggest container terminals, yet productivity is quite similar.
There is lots of low hanging fruit in optimizing operations, like more collaborative stowage planning, simultaneous unloading and loading operations, and 'modal shifting' from road to rail and water combined with early preannouncement of manifests for trains and barges.
Disclaimer: I'm in the business of consulting and building software for container terminals, so I'll generally be biased towards those solutions.
> What I’m wondering is how do U.S. ports compare to, say, Europe or Canada where the situation would be more comparable
Did we read the same article? It’s constantly calling out examples in Europe and Japan, with every data source citing global patterns, not limiting itself to China and America.
My understanding is that majority of non-raw exports are in shipping containers and those have to be shipped back. So I would expect counts of loaded and offloaded shipping containers to be roughly similar. Interestingly, there are some synergies there - if a truck / train brought a shipping container to the port it's more efficient to put one, potentially empty, back for transport compared to running an empty train / truck.
Notably I am assuming that shipping containers survive a large number of trips and their total number is not growing fast.
China is 63-37 exports to imports. US is 44-56. It's different, but it's not so drastically different that I think it would mean a totally different approach to automation is needed.
Yes. Not just the physical assets, but the data, too.
My favorite example is with rail ports. To pick up a container at a rail yard, the truck driver needs a pickup number. The pickup number is associated to the container and is shared (often times on a piece of paper) when the driver checks in.
The pickup number needs to make its way from the cargo owner to the truck driver. How does this happen?
Rail carriers issue the pickup number to cargo owners via email when the train arrives. Cargo owners email it to a freight forwarder. The freight forwarder emails it to the broker. The broker emails to the trucking company. The trucking company emails it or texts it to the driver. This needs to happen in less than 2 days, else someone along that chain is on the hook to pay a storage fee to the rail yard.
You should look into Secure Container Release, Certified PickUp, Secure Chain, and a whole bunch of other initiatives doing this. Here is the Dutch one: https://www.portbase.com/en/programs/secure-chain/
Are we far enough along yet to replicate that scenario in 2024? Or is thst the equivalent of firing all your programmers and trying to ship with ChatGPT from 2-3 minimum wage "prompt engineers"?
I'm sure it will one day be viable on both ends. I'm very unsure if we're there yet, especially if each day of non-production did indeed cost $5b
One thing abut cargo work is that it's always been at full scale since before anybody living was ever born.
Ships have always been as big as they can be, and fewer people handle more (retail value) quicker per person than during less-bulky links in the supply chain.
So fundamentally plenty of money is being made at the port, regardless of the state of automation, this boils down to the lowest priority until all the other elements leading up to the port are taken to a dramatically improved next level automation themselves.
You are generalizing too much. The article is specifically about the efficiency of US ports (compared to ports around the world).
The striking docker workers called a bit of attention to themselves this month ... and this article makes the interesting point that US dock workers are one of the least efficient in the world.
I find this dockworker strike interesting because it's forcing people to re-evaluate their principles and beliefs about workers' rights and unions.
>yass! go labor unions! strike! power to the workers!
>NO, NOT LIKE THAT!
Some questions for those struggling with this:
- How will you reconcile your unconditional love for unions and laborers with the fact that you do not approve of what this labor union is striking against?
- Given that you believe these workers' complaints are invalid, will you continue to support the proliferation of unions?
- If you've deemed the complaints of a labor union to be invalid, what do you think should happen in that case? Would you like to see the union dissolved?
- Would you like to see "shell unions" that severely limit the power of the plebeians but still look good on paper because it's a union and "union == good"?
The article talks a lot about automated ports, but I am wondering what the variation in these automated ports is?
Surely a port built today from the ground up with automation in mind would outperform a port that was retrofitted 20 years ago? Or a port that was upgraded today performing much better than when it was first automated 20 years ago?
Are there any businesses that both have unions and grant employees equity? If so, can the employees transfer their equity to the union, perhaps in lieu of paying dues? I feel like it could be a good way to align incentives, but I'm not sure it's actually feasible in the US.
I suppose unions at public companies could always just buy the stock regardless of employee equity grants.
>current ILA president Harold Daggett has complained about EZ passes for highway tolls eliminating union jobs.
I mean that says it all right? I get union's pretty much exist to protect jobs, but it'd be comically inefficient to still require toll booth attendants in this day and age.
And you can pretty much extrapolate this to every industry. Improving technology has always eliminated jobs, in pretty much every field.
I think of there were honest, actually effective and humane means in place to get new, we'll payed jobs in the area for the folks in the union (or financial support for this those for who a career change isn't as easy for one reason or another) the automation would be seen quite differently.
There is no such thing however, not really. Yes, the world doesn't owe these workers indefinite employment in a specific job. But reality also doesn't owe us or the employer a steady progression towards more efficiency, and workers can (and often will) organize against it of they stand to be hurt.
> the ILA demanded a complete ban on introducing new port automation
"The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of automated machinery due to concerns relating to worker pay and output quality." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
The best part about the unions is there are 50k on strike for 25k jobs. How? Because we already paid off 25k of them so that we could do containerization. That's how it goes. You pay the danegeld and you get more Vikings.
We should back up and ask, "Why do we have an economy?"
If the response is to benefit people, then actions which benefit the economy at the expense of benefiting people are misaligned to our goals. It's an alignment problem and boy if we can't solve this, then I have some bad news for you regarding the next 30 years.
It's not an alignment problem, it's a distribution problem. Automated ports would acutely hurt a very small group of people and help all other people a small amount.
The one basic principle to automate can be that automation should be used as a means to supplement human productivity , but if it replace the basic livelihoods of human beings then it should be taxed and the proceeds distributed as UBI. After all what is the point of automation of it ends up causing suffering for us?
Interesting bad actor problems, whereas a union (which is typically a good thing) does a bad thing (25k job grift, making goods more expensive for everyone), and gives all unions a bad public image and weakens them as a result (bad thing, since it erodes worker leverage/rights in the long term)
There is a classical Roman legal adage "Cui prodest?" ("Who profits?"). I wish people started to apply it to situations and organizations before making blanket statements like this one.
A union is usually intended to protect its members. Is that a "good" thing? OK, imagine a teacher's union fighting to protect a job of John Doe, a member. Will you reflexively say that this is a "good" thing? Aren't you missing important context? What if John Doe is suspected of being a child molester? Still a good thing? After all, the union is meant to protect interests of teachers, not children.
For a slightly more absurd version, imagine a hypothetical Union of Terrestrial Network Workers trying to ban all sorts of wireless Internet: Wi-Fi, 5G, Starlink, or at least put heavy taxation on them. The absence of cables is stealing their jobs, because radio waves don't need nearly as much qualified maintenance. It is also harder to cut wireless Internet in case of a strike action.
In what sense would that be "good" for anyone but their own members?
In some contexts, a union can be a good thing, but it is fundamentally a self-interested cartel. It shouldn't be put into the same box with "really good things" such as cancer treatments or indoor plumbing.
[+] [-] zubiaur|1 year ago|reply
In LATAM, dock workers make sure this goes undetected. I know of an IE who was championing a dock worker scheduling optimization algo, typical Operations Management stuff. Dude was killed.
I'd like to think that this kind of things do not happen here. But every time I've thought along those lines, I've been mistaken. It's just happens at a different scale.
[+] [-] which|1 year ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-59379474
https://www.vice.com/en/article/belgium-netherlands-cocaine-...
https://www.occrp.org/en/project/narcofiles-the-new-criminal...
[+] [-] IncreasePosts|1 year ago|reply
Or are there ghost containers on ships, which are filled with drugs and not part of the manifest, that an automated system would flag but people with greased hands know to let it through?
[+] [-] snapetom|1 year ago|reply
This is the real reason and one of the primary reasons productivity won't be optimized, especially at the LATAM ports.
[+] [-] paganel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Workaccount2|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] evantbyrne|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nostrademons|1 year ago|reply
The goal of the port operator is explicitly to lay off longshoremen so they don't have to pay inflated salaries. It is diametrically opposed to the union's goals in this regard, hence the dispute. The article largely acknowledge that automation succeeds in reducing the number of longshoremen required, which is its actual purpose. (It did question whether the reduced labor costs actually pay for the capital investment required, but didn't give any numbers. Since capital investment is a one-time cost but wages are a recurring cost, this calculation needs to be subjected to discounted cash flow analysis, which also requires that an interest rate be specified.)
[+] [-] partiallypro|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ryathal|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jjk166|1 year ago|reply
Also while the article champions various process improvements to make ports more efficient that don't strictly require automation, it's not an either/or scenario. Implementing automation can make it easier to implement process improvements like scheduling, and process improvements which reduce variability make automation less expensive and more capable. It makes sense to pursue both in parallel.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|1 year ago|reply
1. Repealing the Foreign Dredge Act [1] (or amending it to be compatible with friendshoring);
2. Mandating truck appointment systems (maybe even a centrally-run one, at least for each coast); and
3. Moving to a 24/7 default for our nation’s ports.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Dredge_Act_of_1906
[+] [-] superice|1 year ago|reply
Long story short: the container terminal will always opt to please their customer (shipping line) over their non-customer (trucking companies). Truck appointment systems are usually used to force transporters to smooth out peak times not in the name of efficiency, but rather to lower the amount of dock workers the container terminal needs to hire. The truck companies generally end up footing the bill for this, both in increased workload and in detention/demurrage costs because they can't get their containers out and back in time. This money goes directly into the pocket of both the shipping line and container terminals as this is typically something they make heavy profits on.
Be very wary when container terminals and shipping lines start to push for centrally mandated appointment systems. They are much more consolidated than hinterland transport operators. I'm all for increasing efficiency but let's not even further increase market power for shipping lines and container terminals please.
[+] [-] nfriedly|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] underseacables|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dhosek|1 year ago|reply
⸻
1. In fact, it occurs to me that loading the ship should be faster/more efficient than unloading as there’s not necessarily any reason to do any sorting beyond which ship a container goes on at the export point, while at the import point, there needs to be more direction of getting containers onto individual trucks and trains.
[+] [-] superice|1 year ago|reply
Import cargo is annoying in that it is mostly random access on pickup. For pickup by train, barge, or feeder ship, a vast minority, you typically don't have cargo manifests until a day or two before pickup at best, so in practice this is also random access-ish. The customs processes are also trickier.
My experience is mostly in Rotterdam and Antwerp, and I'd say the problems in the US probably don't have to do much with automation. Rotterdam and Antwerp have very different automation levels at the biggest container terminals, yet productivity is quite similar.
There is lots of low hanging fruit in optimizing operations, like more collaborative stowage planning, simultaneous unloading and loading operations, and 'modal shifting' from road to rail and water combined with early preannouncement of manifests for trains and barges.
Disclaimer: I'm in the business of consulting and building software for container terminals, so I'll generally be biased towards those solutions.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|1 year ago|reply
Did we read the same article? It’s constantly calling out examples in Europe and Japan, with every data source citing global patterns, not limiting itself to China and America.
[+] [-] SR2Z|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] TrainedMonkey|1 year ago|reply
Notably I am assuming that shipping containers survive a large number of trips and their total number is not growing fast.
[+] [-] fallingknife|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mattas|1 year ago|reply
My favorite example is with rail ports. To pick up a container at a rail yard, the truck driver needs a pickup number. The pickup number is associated to the container and is shared (often times on a piece of paper) when the driver checks in.
The pickup number needs to make its way from the cargo owner to the truck driver. How does this happen?
Rail carriers issue the pickup number to cargo owners via email when the train arrives. Cargo owners email it to a freight forwarder. The freight forwarder emails it to the broker. The broker emails to the trucking company. The trucking company emails it or texts it to the driver. This needs to happen in less than 2 days, else someone along that chain is on the hook to pay a storage fee to the rail yard.
[+] [-] superice|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] languagehacker|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] watershawl|1 year ago|reply
0) father of modern management and coiner of term "knowledge worker"
[+] [-] chrisco255|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] johnnyanmac|1 year ago|reply
I'm sure it will one day be viable on both ends. I'm very unsure if we're there yet, especially if each day of non-production did indeed cost $5b
[+] [-] zactato|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fuzzfactor|1 year ago|reply
Ships have always been as big as they can be, and fewer people handle more (retail value) quicker per person than during less-bulky links in the supply chain.
So fundamentally plenty of money is being made at the port, regardless of the state of automation, this boils down to the lowest priority until all the other elements leading up to the port are taken to a dramatically improved next level automation themselves.
[+] [-] sidewndr46|1 year ago|reply
I'm reasonably certain people alive today were born before 1956.
[+] [-] danesparza|1 year ago|reply
The striking docker workers called a bit of attention to themselves this month ... and this article makes the interesting point that US dock workers are one of the least efficient in the world.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] VoodooJuJu|1 year ago|reply
>yass! go labor unions! strike! power to the workers!
>NO, NOT LIKE THAT!
Some questions for those struggling with this:
- How will you reconcile your unconditional love for unions and laborers with the fact that you do not approve of what this labor union is striking against?
- Given that you believe these workers' complaints are invalid, will you continue to support the proliferation of unions?
- If you've deemed the complaints of a labor union to be invalid, what do you think should happen in that case? Would you like to see the union dissolved?
- Would you like to see "shell unions" that severely limit the power of the plebeians but still look good on paper because it's a union and "union == good"?
[+] [-] Workaccount2|1 year ago|reply
Surely a port built today from the ground up with automation in mind would outperform a port that was retrofitted 20 years ago? Or a port that was upgraded today performing much better than when it was first automated 20 years ago?
[+] [-] nfriedly|1 year ago|reply
I suppose unions at public companies could always just buy the stock regardless of employee equity grants.
[+] [-] ApolloFortyNine|1 year ago|reply
I mean that says it all right? I get union's pretty much exist to protect jobs, but it'd be comically inefficient to still require toll booth attendants in this day and age.
And you can pretty much extrapolate this to every industry. Improving technology has always eliminated jobs, in pretty much every field.
[+] [-] black_puppydog|1 year ago|reply
There is no such thing however, not really. Yes, the world doesn't owe these workers indefinite employment in a specific job. But reality also doesn't owe us or the employer a steady progression towards more efficiency, and workers can (and often will) organize against it of they stand to be hurt.
[+] [-] 0xbadcafebee|1 year ago|reply
"The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of automated machinery due to concerns relating to worker pay and output quality." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
[+] [-] renewiltord|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] KolmogorovComp|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 39896880|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] testcase_delta|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kelseyfrog|1 year ago|reply
If the response is to benefit people, then actions which benefit the economy at the expense of benefiting people are misaligned to our goals. It's an alignment problem and boy if we can't solve this, then I have some bad news for you regarding the next 30 years.
[+] [-] marinmania|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] la64710|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] antisthenes|1 year ago|reply
What's the proposed solution here?
[+] [-] inglor_cz|1 year ago|reply
For WHOM?
There is a classical Roman legal adage "Cui prodest?" ("Who profits?"). I wish people started to apply it to situations and organizations before making blanket statements like this one.
A union is usually intended to protect its members. Is that a "good" thing? OK, imagine a teacher's union fighting to protect a job of John Doe, a member. Will you reflexively say that this is a "good" thing? Aren't you missing important context? What if John Doe is suspected of being a child molester? Still a good thing? After all, the union is meant to protect interests of teachers, not children.
For a slightly more absurd version, imagine a hypothetical Union of Terrestrial Network Workers trying to ban all sorts of wireless Internet: Wi-Fi, 5G, Starlink, or at least put heavy taxation on them. The absence of cables is stealing their jobs, because radio waves don't need nearly as much qualified maintenance. It is also harder to cut wireless Internet in case of a strike action.
In what sense would that be "good" for anyone but their own members?
In some contexts, a union can be a good thing, but it is fundamentally a self-interested cartel. It shouldn't be put into the same box with "really good things" such as cancer treatments or indoor plumbing.
[+] [-] baggy_trough|1 year ago|reply