The planning master

Huge window fronts and many monitors - this is what the brain of Burchardkai looks like at first glance. Here, in the control centre, all the goings-on at the terminal are planned and controlled. This has been Michael Cieslik's "realm" since the end of 2015. "All the planning and controlling activities of CTB are my responsibility," says Michael Cieslik, not without pride, "so in addition to berth, ship, resource and work planning, I am also responsible for shift management and the control of water-side and land-side handling as well as the storage crane system."

In concrete terms, there are many questions to be answered: Which ship lies in which place for how long, what is the container flow in the warehouse, how many bridges are needed for the next discharge? Everywhere an answer has to be found, that is the everyday business of Cieslik and the 120 employees in his department. The industrial engineer is always the contact person and has to be "in" on all the issues.

Quite a lot of tasks for one person, one might think. But Michael Cieslik knows how the container runs at the HHLA terminal. "In addition to strong leadership and management skills, you definitely need detailed operational knowledge and a good deal of pragmatism for this job," says Cieslik. At the same time: never lose sight of the big picture.

A job that entails a lot of responsibility. But the 42-year-old is used to it: he went to sea as an officer in the navy for twelve years - several of them as a submarine commander. This experience helps, because not all actors always agree. Cieslik mediates and tries to find the optimal solution. "The shipowner wants maximum utilisation on board. We at HHLA, on the other hand, want everything to be planned early and to come efficiently from the terminal," explains Cieslik. "Getting the various concerns under one hat is sometimes a balancing act."

Even on the HHLA site there are sometimes competing interests: "From the point of view of a ship's planner, for example, it would be desirable to always have direct access to the containers, i.e. ideally to store everything just one box up so as to have to restack as rarely as possible," says Cieslik with a sweeping gesture of his hand. "The yard planners, on the other hand, want to stack everything high to save space," he says with a laugh, bringing his palms together again. Even if it's rarely easy - Cieslik almost always finds a workable way for everyone!