GoTa Dispatch Solution Serves Informatization Construction of China's Tianjin Port

Tianjin Port is located in the lower reaches of the Haihe River in North China Plain. It is the biggest man-made harbor in China and an important international trade port in North China. It serves as the ocean gateway to the country's capital, Beijing, and Tianjin City; it is also one of the starting points of the Eurasian continental bridge in the east. It is 66 km away from Tianjin City and over 170 km from Beijing City. It has established trade connections with more than 400 ports of over 180 countries and regions across the world.

To meet the requirements of building a modernized large port around the Bohai Sea Rim region, as well as a super large-scale port in China, Tianjin Port should become a leader in the construction of an intelligent, informatized port. The powerful radio dispatch and wireless data services supported by the GoTa system can meet the port's requirements in production dispatch, data collection, transmission and processing, as well as resource management, thus realizing the intelligent dispatch management function. 

The GoTa services serving Tianjin Port have won unanimous praises from port leaders and employees. ZTE provided a series of customized functions and solutions for Tianjin Port that has features such as high density working areas, high intensity work, and coexistence of several types of work.

Customized Development for the Dock Application
Through analyzing the radio dispatch requirements for a Tianjin Port container dock, ZTE's expert team summarized the following features concerning the radio trunking dispatch applications at this dock.

• Fixed working area: Trunking users at the dock work in a certain small area, which can be covered by a sector or a BTS. 
•  High-density working area: The working area has a large number of users and can be divided into many trunking groups.
• Frequent trunking dispatches: During working hours, trunking users make frequent use of the dispatch function.
• Continuity of trunking dispatches: When users use the dispatch service of the trunking system, the continuity of their operations is required.
• Complicated trunking dispatch procedure: The radio dispatch operations at a large port dock involve a lot of departments, and the process is relatively complicated.
• High requirements for connection time: To ensure the security of dock work, high requirements have been placed on the connection time of trunking group calls.
• Flexible radio dispatch operations: During the specific loading and unloading operations, workers at the port should be dynamically arranged, that is, trunking users can be grouped as needed.
• Practicality and operability of trunking dispatch operations: Users require flexible and convenient operations.
  While taking these features into consideration, ZTE's expert team has gained a deep understanding of the users' specific requirements after communicating with relevant staffs of the dock. It divided the working group of the dock into three types-operation, maintenance, and routine- and applied GoTa functions to the site, such as dynamic regrouping, multiple priorities, dispatch console function, and functional number. At present, the dispatch services at the dock are running in an efficient and stable manner.

Customized Development for the Container Yard Application
Compared with the traditional trunking radio communications systems, GoTa has a powerful data transmission capability. ZTE, based on the system's data transmission capability, created a custom data collection system for the container yard, targeting the container yard industry features, such as a large working area, widely distributed workers, frequent information collection, and low precision of the existing system. This system changes the traditional working mode in the container yard (calling and manual input) and improves the timeliness and correctness of container information transmission. In view of users' specific working scenario, as well as the Short Message Service (SMS) transmission function of the GoTa system, ZTE developed custom SMS-modem and user interface software, which enables real-time input of on-site information into the user database via SMS. The whole process doesn't involve any manual operation, ensuring work efficiency.

Unified dispatch management of Logistics Vehicles
The port is a big arena for logistics services. The great variety of logistics vehicles makes it difficult to uniformly dispatch them. Leveraging the powerful dispatch, data transmission and positioning functions of the GoTa system, the port can implement unified dispatch of most vehicles.

• A unified dispatch platform for timely command and control: All vehicles of the port are equipped with the vehicle-mounted stations. The logistics companies are installed with the dispatch stations, capable of dispatching and commanding most of their managed vehicles at any time.
• A positioning platform for real-time information about the vehicles: The interface of the dispatch console can provide real-time information about the location and route of the vehicle that is equipped with GPS vehicle-mounted stations.
• A complete monitoring of special vehicles to improve work efficiency: Under the traditional vehicle management mode, it is hard to get information about the concrete and bulk cargo trunks-Tianjin Port has many such types of vehicles -which may lead to losses and damages of goods. Supported by the GoTa system platform, the background station can provide real-time information about the status of both the vehicles and the containers. When any abnormality occurs, for example, a driver slacks off at work or unloads cargo without permission, the background station will automatically record it and send alerts to the driver, protecting the owner's benefits and improving work efficiency.

Conclusion
So far, GoTa has been serving Tianjin Port for about two years with the user groups distributed in various departments of the port, covering all frontline production units and functional departments. As the port informatization construction is deepening and the port scale is expanding, the GoTa service platforms will further integrate more applications like coalition emergency response, remote metering, electric power management, electronic patrol and mobile office, offering better services to Tianjin Port.