Operational advantages of CommTrac TOS in the grain market

TBA’s bulk and general cargo terminal operating system, CommTrac, is in use in over 40 installations, managing numerous operations throughout the UK, as well as those as far flung as India, Mozambique, Australia, Canada and South Africa, for customers including Associated British Ports, Peel Ports and APMT.

Unlike the container terminal environment, where a terminal operating system (TOS) is a standard prerequisite, the bulk cargo sector is so operationally diverse that a single system was not considered feasible and so ports and terminals remained reliant on manual processes. Where digital systems were present, they would be separate from one another, with data being transferred from one system to another. Operations, management, finance and planning stakeholders had no central hub of information, no ‘single source of truth’, making it difficult — often impossible — to obtain real-time operational information.

Regrettably, this is still the case for many bulk ports and terminals around the world — and TBA continues to evangelize the benefits of a bulk TOS to new customers every year — but there is now wide recognition by the industry that a centralized, consolidated, integrated TOS has huge operational advantages. Adopting a TOS can unlock increased efficiencies, allow for greater automation, and make growth aspirations far more feasible.

CommTrac is a sophisticated and hugely scalable product, but it started life as a bespoke inventory management solution developed for a single grain terminal in the UK. Founded in 1976 as a specialist instrument engineering company, DB Controls was commissioned to develop the system for Peel Ports, then known as Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, in Liverpool, UK.

“In the beginning, they bet on us when we had nothing but an idea,” recalls Managing Director, David Trueman. “We were bright and we were innovative, but we didn’t have anything. They took a chance.”

The project primarily involved the installation of a SCADA electrical and control system at nine new grain silos, and this was the first time that the company had experienced any form of digitization within its operation. The project was a success and directly inspired the development of what would ultimately become CommTrac. As Trueman recalls: “The customer explained that all their inventory management was being done on paper. They saw how the SCADA system we had installed was managing the plant and collecting data, alongside their weighing system, which was also digital. And they asked how difficult it would be to build an inventory management system in the middle?”

And so, the DB Controls team started development of a bespoke solution for the customer. “We lost money on the project because we didn’t know how long the system was going to take to build, but nevertheless we built it. And it worked perfectly!”

As soon as the system was up and running, it began to attract the attention of other players in the industry. Tilbury Docks faced similar challenges at their grain terminal on the Thames and were interested to explore how the system could be adopted for their use. Meanwhile Mersey Docks had developed a new animal feed store and wanted to expand the system to manage this too. At this point, DB Controls realized that it had something special on its hands. “This very bespoke system we created to meet the requirements of a single terminal was now managing three terminals, and we thought, why stop there?”

The first version of the software was called MOATS – Management Operations And Tracking System. “Our focus at that time was on providing inventory management with a strong influence on traceability of the cargo,” said Trueman. “In the food sector, people were already doing traceability, but we were probably the first to bring it to the raw materials sector.” This focus on traceability proved timely as European legislation was also introduced at this time giving the feature even more relevance.

The Launch And Development Of Commtrac

Following the huge success of these projects and recognising the potential of the software as a commodity tracking system with applications for a wide range of operations, DB Controls made the decision to shift their focus and formed a new subsidiary called DBIS. Thus began two years of intensive development and establishing a fully formed product: CommTrac.

The development team took this opportunity to address the architecture and methodology of the software. Instead of a traditional desktop Windows application, a web-based platform was instead adopted. While this software as a service (SaaS) approach is now a very common approach to software develop- ment, at the time it was less so, especially in the industry. However, this decision gave CommTrac incredibly solid foundations for further development in years to come.

Adopting a web-based platform further paid off with the ease with which CommTrac could be accessible via mobile devices. Following the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, smartphones have achieved near ubiquity and their application within a bulk terminal environment is obvious to anyone with direct experience of these sites. Interacting with a traditional desktop computer, or even a laptop, is often impractical, and one of the reasons why resorting to paper-based record-keeping remained so prevalent.

The smartphone changes that. On-theground employees can use an accessible mobile solution, giving them timely access to information and allowing them to easily document their actions. This can enhance both their personal efficiency and that of the entire operational process. The CommTrac mobile application, introduced in 2016, was designed to prioritize simplicity, ease of use with minimal touchscreen interactions, and wide compatibility with different mobile operating systems and hardware. Key operational areas such as event logging, cargo tallying and scanning cargo barcodes are all perfect use cases for a mobile-based application.

CommTrac is now used in a range of different bulk and general cargo settings, including coal, fertilizers, wood pellets and minerals, but grain is where it all started, and is still a particular area of expertise all these years later.

When considering the source of CommTrac’s success, Trueman puts it down to not only the outstanding TBA employees who have contributed to the product’s development, but also points to the very origins of the company. “If you’re an engineering company then you don’t understand how to produce software. And if you’re a software company you don’t understand the real-world processes or what’s really important to the customer. The fact that we are an engineering company and a software company means that we transcend those two disciplines and that gives us a deep understanding of what our customer’s needs really are, sometimes before they realize it themselves!”