Zebra Enterprise Solutions, a division of Zebra Technologies, announced that Terminal Zarate in Argentina replaced its original terminal operating system (TOS) of eight years with Navis SPARCS N4 making it the first terminal in South America to implement the industry-leading, proven solution.
A small, privately-owned facility that sits on the Parana' River upstream from Buenos Aires, Terminal Zarate decided after three years of consideration to replace its COSMOS terminal operating system implemented in 2001 with SPARCS N4 to reduce cost and increase flexibility.
"We think that the Navis solution was the best one for our start-up terminal," said Oliver Gustavo, Container Division Manager at Terminal Zarate, which opened in 2001. "We've already handled our very first vessel with SPARCS N4. It was a very smooth implementation, and we are growing quite fast now."
Even during this global recessionary economy, Gustavo said SPARCS N4 will help Zarate increase its growth by controlling cost and monitoring terminal operations. Zarate currently moves only 35,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs - a standard measure in intermodal transport).
"The terminal has the potential to handle 500,000 TEUs with future expansion," Gustavo said. "We usually change our internal procedures to adapt to growth and SPARCS N4 is flexible enough to support the changes. For example, we can change procedures on how we deliver and receive cargo without a problem. This is something that would have been quite expensive with our previous TOS and would have taken a lot of time. We can change procedures within a week with SPARCS N4. With our old system, it would take at least a month."
The web-based SPARCS N4 operating system governs the movement of all container logistics and operations from gate to yard to vessel and offers users improved customer support, lower operating costs and increased stacking yard capacity. It enables greater control over resources for operations to quickly and intelligently respond to changes or disruptions in the flow of cargo.
"Our customers have told us that the ability to adapt the TOS to their specific operation, combined with low total cost of ownership, scalability and advanced optimization methods are the core drivers of ROI that they look for in a terminal operating system," said Bill Walsh, General Manager at Zebra Enterprise Solutions. "No other vendor has anything close to what the Navis SPARCS N4 TOS delivers in these key areas. SPARCS N4 will provide Terminal Zarate the low-cost, low-risk economics of packaged software, without sacrificing the flexibility of a custom solution."
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