INNOVATION

Innovation is a core commitment at St. James.  It is in our DNA to continuously strive to find new and better ways to perform our job and improve the experience of our customer.  Though many companies "talk the talk" with innovation, we believe that St. James can actually stand behind the talk with a track record that shows creativity, innovation, and leadership in a number of areas that allow us to differentiate ourselves from other organizations.  


We are a company that fully believes that our best innovations come directly from our workforce.  To begin with, St. James focuses on getting the personal goals of  employees aligned with the objective of delivering top quality customer service. To align goals, St. James employees participate in an aggressive profit sharing plan that gives one-third of stevedoring profits to its employees.  Our employees see the direct benefit of working for an efficient, safe, and quality-focused operation.


Following on the heels of aligning the people has been the use of statistical process analysis to determine at a detailed level the opportunities to decrease costs, increase efficiency, and reduce overall transfer time.  This type of analysis has allowed St. James to better understand the key drivers of speed, efficiency, and quality of cargo handling, and to subsequently make improvements either in equipment, process, or people to ensure we are continuing to improve our performance and deliver the best product we can to our customers. We look at the results of our improvement process and if they don't deliver we adapt and correct.


Next, St. James has been a leader in innovating the equipment that is utilized for mid-stream cargo transfers.  In 2004 St. James partnered with Gottwald Port Technology to create the world's first floating Gottwald Mobile Harbor Crane.  This crane, an industry standard in container ports, is a highly efficient, electric drive crane with high cargo capacity and efficient cycle times.  All that leads to faster, safer, and higher quality cargo transfers.  The first crane, christened in 2005, was the Alex G, named in honor of one of St. James' founders, Alex Goldberger.  Since then, 7 additional cranes of this sort have been added to the St. James fleet including the first two Model 8 cranes operating on the Mississippi River system.  The ultimate sign of being an industry leader has been the adoption of this crane by 20+ organizations globally, including other competitor stevedores located right here on the Mississippi River.


In 2006 St. James created St. James Technologies.  This company has the prime objective of creating innovations for industry.  They are focused on creating "game changing" technologies that allow for increased efficiency and safer operations.  Some of their innovations have led to individual patents on the work they have completed.  They have made strides forward in developing new and improved ways to draft floating vessels as well as the development of their first actively marketed product, Harbor Telematics Crane Data System. St. James Technologies has been responsible for developing our remote camera systems and our Terminal Operating Systems.
They've been a game changer for us - see what they can do for you by visiting St. James Technologies website here: http://sjtechs.com


See these articles written about Harbor Telematics:
 
Business Report

 

http://www.businessreport.com/article/20110322/BUSINESSREPORT01/303219968

 

 Louisiana Export Guide

http://ldec.org/wp-content/docs/LouisianaExportGuide.pdf