DP World Southampton Celebrates Five Years of VBS Success

In June 2005, DP World Southampton launched Europe’s first ever mandatory vehicle booking system (VBS).  The primary objective of introducing VBS was, and still is, to smooth the flow of vehicles over a longer period throughout the day and ultimately reduce turnaround times for lorries. 

VBS was designed by the terminal’s in-house IT development team, following consultation with the haulage community, which means that it has been able to grow and develop in line with how the terminal has developed and the needs of the users during the last five years.

Talking about the success of VBS - Steve McCrindle, Operations Manager,
DP World Southampton, said:  “Since the introduction of VBS we have seen the average turnaround times for lorries using the terminal fall dramatically.  In particular, during recent years, we have seen the average turnaround time fall to around 30-40 minutes.  VBS also enables us to utilise the resources serving the landside operation as efficiently as possible as we know how many lorries we will be handling in a given hour during the day.”

“VBS is tailored to suit our operation and can be updated in line with terminal developments.  The system is highly flexible for the users too, enabling them to dynamically amend their bookings as they need to, either via the internet or our 24/7 help desk team.”

John Williams, Managing Director, Maritime Transport, UK market leader in the container transport sector with over 200 vehicles based in Southampton added:  “Although there was some initial resistance from the local haulage community when VBS was launched some five years ago, we worked very closely with the management team to ensure that the new system was implemented effectively.  Today, it is hard to imagine the terminal operating in any other way. Not only has VBS helped in improving the service performance to our customers, it has also improved our vehicle productivity too.”

“Since VBS was introduced at the terminal, our business has grown five fold. We greatly value our relationship with DP World Southampton and appreciate that VBS has made Southampton one of the UK’s most efficient port operations.”

DP World Southampton’s operational management team have regular meetings with the haulage community to identify any potential improvements to the system.

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