Picture a classic port tallyman. Rain, snow, wind – and a person with a tablet (or worse, a paper notepad) has to read container numbers on the fly, check seals, and look out for dents. The human factor here is unavoidable. The Vladivostok Commercial Sea Port (VMTP, part of the FESCO group) decided to solve this problem radically by launching the country’s first “electronic tallyman”. The presentation of the project, by the way, made quite a lot of noise at the recent TransRussia exhibition.
How it looks in practice:
• A special U-shaped portal packed with high-resolution cameras is mounted right on the pier.
• A loaded truck doesn’t even need to stop. As the vehicle drives through the frame, the system scans the container’s surface from all sides.
• The port’s internal information system instantly receives digitized data: the container number, the integrity of the seals, the legibility of stencils, and, critically, any external damage.
Deep analysis: why does the market need this right now?
It’s not just about buzzwords like “machine vision”. Right now, with the entire cargo flow shifting towards Asia, the ports of the Far East are working at the very limit of their throughput capacity. Every second a truck is delayed at the terminal translates into hours of idle time for ships in the anchorage.
The implementation of completely domestic software for visual inspection provides a powerful multiplier effect:
Phenomenal acceleration: Loading and unloading operations proceed without pauses for manual verification. Transshipment speeds up dramatically.
Zero tolerance for errors: The system eliminates disputes with cargo owners. If a container arrives with a dent, the port has solid digital proof that the damage occurred before unloading. This completely changes the approach to cargo insurance.
Transparency: Intra-port operations can no longer be conducted in the “grey” zone. Every step is automatically recorded in the database.
Bottom line: FESCO has set a standard that other terminals in the country will now have to catch up with if they want to survive in conditions of severe port capacity shortages.