> "We only had a 20% drop in volume, so we managed 80% of that volume manually. [...] Customers were great contributors to overcoming that."
That makes me think that either a) IT isn’t quite as essential as we software people like to think, or b) the full potential of automation hasn’t been achieved yet.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has a message page for announcements to truckers. They're very real-world: "Gate 6 is closed due to flooding from a broken water main" kind of info. They were saying Maersk was totally down, then only handling inbound refrigerated containers, then inbound only. Later announcements mentioned manual processing, few gates open, long wait times, and suggested delaying shipments. It was about two weeks before they were fully back up and accepting everything, including empties.
LA was down for four days, but Maersk also has a terminal at Long Beach which was unaffected, so they diverted one container ship there. They weren't accepting online orders for a week or two, the tracking system was down, email was down, and they were trying to operate by voice phone only. Many customers had containers stuck in the container stacks at the port.
Rotterdam's robotic container handling was down for a while, but details are scanty. Most of the problems were apparently with the truck-side systems, the ones which get the right container onto the right truck.
This was a big deal.
As mentioned in the embedded clip, it has the potential to get much worse in the future where even the boats are completely autonomous.
Also mentioned was that 90% of the orders came from internet, so 10% is not? Surprised me a little. Got the feeling that they have lots of manual paperwork even for internet orders, which probably helped a lot.
My guess is they'd quickly suffer potentially company-ending losses if they were to stop using modern IT altogether.
It takes a while for one vessel to reach the next port/terminal. Once it left the previous terminal you'll get a stowage layout. Basically showing all the containers on a vessel and where they're supposed to unload/discharge.
You can use that file to tell the next terminal to unload whatever the file mentions. Then load whatever customers handed into the terminal and have the terminal handle the new stowage layout.
Thanks to loads of practical problems terminals are pretty capable to handle loads of things for you.
Obviously if the terminal itself is also affected it's a way bigger problem.