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from the instead-of-csv-files-we-should-use...xls? dept.
A Suezmax container ship can hold over 10,000 TEUs or “Twenty Foot Equivalent Units”. Most containers carried are double this length – FEUs or “Forty Foot Equivalent Units” – but that still means in the region of 5,000 containers.
Only around one third of that cargo is on-deck though – most is hidden in the holds, under massive hatch covers. To get a container out from the bottom of the hold could involve removing 50 containers from that hatch cover, removing the hatch cover, then taking a further 8 containers to access the bottom of a stack.
Screw up the load plan and you create chaos. What if the load plan, which is just a CSV list or similar, is hacked and modified? No-one knows what container is where. instead of taking 24-48 hours to load and unload, it could take weeks to manually re-inventory the ship. Time is money for a ship. Lots of money. Blocking a port for a period whilst the mess is resolved incurs enormous costs and could even jeopardise supplies to an entire country.
Seems like more bang-for-the-buck than an IED [Improvised Explosive Device].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @05:16PM
Most improbable.
They monitor the vessel, as a vessel, during loading and unloading. If the load is not up to spec, they stop loading. And quite likely, lawsuits follow because you're not talking about a coupla benjamins here.
As for counter-optimal load schedules for efficiency, that's also highly improbable because that's also an aspect of what is checked.
Basically, if either of those cases is screwed up large numbers of the crew and stevedores and office staff are likely to be fired or otherwise penalised. And the captain, if he lets it go, may very well find himself explaining his choices to a judge.
It's exotic and weird, but the shipping industry is quite risk-averse, and has centuries of bad examples to draw from. Turns out, they have rules that protect them from things like drunk or overtired pilots, through to idiotic or corrupt machine operators.