New York Container Terminal recently earned an A+ rating from an outside auditing firm for its control and maintenance of 288 widely divergent pieces of rolling equipment and parts inventory. The rating came after the same department had failed a similar audit in 2005. According to Charlie Priscu, the container facility’s manager of power equipment, the rating boost was due largely to the implementation of Dossier maintenance management software. “We went from the bottom to the top in one year,” Priscu says.
NYCT, a deep-water container facility on 187 acres on Staten Island in New York Harbor, transfers cargo containers between ships and surface transportation modes, including truck and rail. The customer-oriented company also consolidates small international shipments into container loads and operates a large food warehouse. Dossier is the profit-driving maintenance management software developed and supported by Burlington, N.J.-based Arsenault Associates.
Priscu is responsible for the maintenance and operation of an unusual array of rolling stock, including 75 switchers or yard hostlers, 90 10,000-pound fork lifts, three 30,000-pound fork lifts, 25 30-ton top-loaders, 10 so-called sidebars, 70 pickup trucks, 12 SUVs, two school buses (to ferry crew to and from ships) and one General Electric 2,000 hp diesel rail locomotive.
NYCT strives for excellence in all its operations, Priscu says, but when he came to the company in 2006, his department had first failed, then barely passed, the outside audit. The problem was in documentation and control of rolling assets and parts inventory. Previously, NYCT had shopped for a solution and selected Dossier, but implementation had been limited; it was only being used to create and track work orders. Priscu set about harnessing the power of Dossier to track inventory and establish a viable preventive maintenance program. “The immediate payoff was in easy access to information, locating parts and accounting for assets,” Priscu says. “We have PMs on time now, and we’re not missing things.”
Priscu says Dossier has helped NYCT cooperate with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to control air polluting emissions in the port. “We use handheld computers with Dossier and record the fuel pumped to each piece of equipment,” he says. “We compare that to the hours the equipment runs between fill-ups, so we have very accurate records of gallons per hour burned that validate our compliance with the Port Authority’s clean air program. If I’m saving fuel, I’m putting less hydrocarbons in the air.”
Based on success in Priscu’s department, NYCT is in the process of implementing Dossier in another department that is responsible for the operation and maintenance of NYCT’s six quayside gantry cranes and four new post-Panamax cranes — giant, multi-faceted machines that actually lift containers between ship and shore.
