It's really difficult to answer if it concerns a multimodal platform.
A container freight station combines all the constraints to which the transport modes involved in the supply chain are exposed. Factors such as weather (high water and low water levels), infrastructures (state of locks, railroad, roads) traffic conditions lead to the coexistence of diverging dynamics in a freight station. Temporalities and constraints cannot always be controlled. In other word, there is an important situational variability and this configuration yields significant difficulties when performing planning, scheduling and dispatching tasks during the process.
In the same time, you have to integrate the incidental variability when containers are damaged, opened, not properly closed or when they have fallen in the water. It also occurs when handling operations cause train derailment or when equipment breaks down. Yet certain operations require specific equipment such as cranes for the handling of barges. Failures thus make it crucial to find alternative solutions which are particularly costly since these had not been planned. Furthermore, beyond the tasks of transshipment (loading, unloading and/or transfer), process involved control tasks of containers and I don’t talk about train operations (control of train, control of containers, twistlocks installation, loading, control)…
In this environment, human work consists in trying to absorb, or at least reduce the effects of various constraints. There is permanent adjustments that occur in the process.
It's really difficult to answer if it concerns a multimodal platform.
A container freight station combines all the constraints to which the transport modes involved in the supply chain are exposed. Factors such as weather (high water and low water levels), infrastructures (state of locks, railroad, roads) traffic conditions lead to the coexistence of diverging dynamics in a freight station. Temporalities and constraints cannot always be controlled. In other word, there is an important situational variability and this configuration yields significant difficulties when performing planning, scheduling and dispatching tasks during the process.
In the same time, you have to integrate the incidental variability when containers are damaged, opened, not properly closed or when they have fallen in the water. It also occurs when handling operations cause train derailment or when equipment breaks down. Yet certain operations require specific equipment such as cranes for the handling of barges. Failures thus make it crucial to find alternative solutions which are particularly costly since these had not been planned. Furthermore, beyond the tasks of transshipment (loading, unloading and/or transfer), process involved control tasks of containers and I don’t talk about train operations (control of train, control of containers, twistlocks installation, loading, control)…
In this environment, human work consists in trying to absorb, or at least reduce the effects of various constraints. There is permanent adjustments that occur in the process.