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November 23, 2022 • 5 min read

MARITIME

Arrow Labs

Company
Dubai Ports World (DPW) is a leading enabler of global trade and an integral part of the supply chain. The Dubai Ports World portfolio consists of 78 marine and inland terminals supported by over 50 related businesses. These businesses span over 40 countries across 6 continents with a significant presence in both high-growth and mature markets.

Challenge
Over the years, Dubai Ports World (DPW) has grown exponentially to provide cutting-edge maritime, transport, and logistics to a global audience. With the port reaching over 134 sq. km. and becoming the world’s largest, some complexities rose with the huge geographical footprint.

Paper-based logs and disparate systems created difficulty in gathering information and presented challenges in coordinating responses to various incidents in a timely fashion. This complexity placed a huge burden on the security officers to make informed decisions and resolve incidents quickly to ensure port safety compliance standards.

As a result, their security management team felt it critically necessary to improve their port safety operations, by drastically reducing incident response time. To achieve this goal, DPW needed to identify key areas of the security apparatus that can be improved upon quickly and effectively to achieve a safer environment.

Solution
The Dubai Ports World security team engaged Arrow Labs to help create a comprehensive solution for managing the officers and accurately capturing information from the field to be readily available for decision-making and incident resolution actions.

To meet the set objectives, it was clear that innovative automation that streamlined field response was the way forward.

With MIMS by Arrow Labs providing a unified workforce management solution, it was easy to integrate with key backend systems and manage field data capture via mobile devices seamlessly. In addition, MIMS includes business process management capabilities, facilitating automation in operations, and bridging the requirement gap appropriately.

Value-adds of MIMS for DPW include:

Communication
Communications capabilities ensured “in process” communications were properly sent, received, and acted upon. This meant control room operators could dispatch a task to a field officer, track its progress and follow compliance procedures. A field officer could raise an incident from the field; attach media and information for the control operator to respond with the required resolution procedures.

Electronic Capture
The ability to electronically capture and store every field incident in a central repository along with associated actions and resolution steps were taken by each party. MIMS easy-to-use interface provides an organized history trail for each incident to help operators retrace steps taken and ensure compliance with audit standards.

Collaboration
A multi-disciplinary activity plan that enables operators to assign tasks, monitor activities, and gain visibility into the entire chain of operation, helping the security team communicate and collaborate and reducing the amount of time spent searching for and capturing information.

Automated Accuracy
Location tracking, shift, and duty modules that enable efficient management of the field force and eliminate errors by sending the right actions to the right person as well as dispatching incidents based on responder availability and location, thus minimizing travel time.

KPI Tracking & Business Intelligence
MIMS has powerful dashboards that can be benchmarked against historic and real-time data, so information from processes that are currently running can be used to make immediate more-informed decisions. For example, knowing the historical response times for various officers and their areas of specialization might help select the most appropriate responder for a specific type of emergency. Knowing the areas that generate the greatest number of incidents can assist the management in creating an efficient manpower distribution plan so that more officers are located in those “hot zones”.

Results
DPW engaged the Arrow Labs team from conception to model the processes and workflows. Besides the insight provided by the DPW management and officers about their procedures, due diligence was performed by Arrow Labs to further flesh out and model the processes and workflows. This opened up opportunities to improve and eliminate bottlenecks, bridge the gaps and automate procedures that would in turn assist in achieving the key objective of reduced response times.

According to Matar Alfalasi, Regional Security Operations Manager of DPW, “From conception to implementation of the project, the Arrow Labs team were professional in their approach and worked tirelessly to meet and exceed our requirements promptly.”

Benefits

Real-Time Field Reporting
Though one instant improvement in the process was around how field incidents were reported. With MIMS, once the officer identifies an incident, he immediately captures the details with his mobile device, attaches necessary media and information, and raises the incident to the control room in real-time. In the past, it was challenging, if not impossible, to provide incident details to the control room in a timely fashion. With the implementation of MIMS, information is available instantly and electronically. Such closed-loop communication ensures that data is captured accurately, eliminates errors, and automates the incident response process.

Automated Information Sharing
MIMS also provided information-sharing capabilities, so all involved parties are aware and interacted accordingly. Before MIMS, it was a challenge to respond rapidly to incidents, due to incomplete information, manual processes, lack of real-time location visibility of resources, and paper-based data that was difficult to gather and store. Handling certain incidents had to be done manually at the end of the day once the logbooks were gathered from the duty posts and analyzed. This created an inconsistent and delayed response to incidents that in turn put an additional burden on the officers. With MIMS however, field operations are streamlined from start to finish, and every individual is aware of the progress.

Long-Lasting Gains
To this day, the adoption of MIMS is helping the security team at DPW meet their objectives of lowering response times and streamlining operations. The integrated solution with the security management system has dramatically improved safety and reduced the burden on the security staff through its collaborative capabilities and real-time information sharing.

According to DPW’s security management team, “Our main advantages of using MIMS include a considerable reduction in reporting times, quick handling and resolution of incidents, real-time operational visibility, and access to electronically stored information that is readily available for decision-making and planning.”

“MIMS helped us by automating and streamlining operations of the security forces in the field by accurately reporting incidents in real-time, enabling the capture of incident details supported by photos and videos via mobile phones. MIMS also provided electronic logging of all field tasks including patrolling and inspections, eliminating the need for previously used paper-based logs.”

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