AGORA Workshop in Dudelange at CFL Terminals

The first AGORA workshop in 2023 year took place at the invitation of CFL Terminals in Dudelange Luxembourg.

On 30.03.2023, the focus was more on theoretical content. Among others AGORA benchmarking was discussed in detail as a survey on key performance indicators within the AGORA terminals. This year, the focus was on indicators such as storage duration or the utilization of transhipment equipment. In the case of the latter key indicator, it has once again been shown that even in terminals with high capacity utilization, the operational utilization of the handling equipment does not exceed 75-80% due to fluctuations in the daily, weekly and annual cycle. Especially the night hours in terminals with 24 h operation as well as the weekends reduce the average operational handling capacity of the terminals. This suggests the recommendation to lower the operational utilization rate of handling equipment from the current 90% to 75%.
The evaluation of storage durations also indicated a fundamentally higher storage requirement than currently assumed.
The aggregated results may be used in the “Terminal Manual 2.0” project to expand the database. This will allow the recommendations for dimensioning, sizing and design of modern intermodal terminals from 2012 to be updated on the basis of valid practical data and, in particular, to be significantly simplified.

Another topic dealt with the energy consumption of crane systems as well as CT terminals in general. Some survey results were also presented, such as the relevance of SOLAS weighing in AGORA terminals. Here it became clear that the demand for SOLAS weighing is rather decreasing, but in terminals serving maritime CT there are still quite relevant quantities.
At the next meeting, which will take place at ÖBB in Vienna, a survey on the terminal management systems in the AGORA terminals will be on the agenda. Not only the manufacturers are to be surveyed, but also the individual functionalities of the systems used.

At the end of the long workshop day we were rewarded with a great view of the CFL terminal including a rainbow.

On the 2nd workshop day, things got practical with a terminal visit. After a presentation of CFL Multimodal by Barbara Chevalier, Daniel Feyder and Paul Kronenberger showed us the individual terminal processes in detail on the extensive premises during a bus ride. The special features of horizontal handling with the Modallohr system during truck check-in and transshipment itself could be observed.
But also the gantry crane handling by the new remote control desk was followed live, David Moosbrugger from gantry crane manufacturer Kuenz was available for technical questions.

The individual steps towards crane automation were presented in the subsequent technical lecture by David Moosbrugger, while Alex van Winckel from the software manufacturer Inform focused on the terminal operating system and on the stronger integration of the crane management system in order to optimize the terminal processes as a whole.

After these very informative two days, we would like to thank our hosts for their hospitality!