Smart Technologies and Digitalization

In today's fast-evolving container shipping industry, the challenge is not a lack of available data but the huge amount of unstructured data sources. In the past, the container shipping industry might have faced challenges due to low digitisation and limited data availability. However, in today's modern supply chain, each stakeholder is both dependent on multiple data sources and generating crucial information for others in the ecosystem.

Container terminals are living ecosystems built over complex and large infrastructures with several parties interacting in a coordinated way to offer highly complex logistic services under strict operational planning and tight cost controls. Due to the port and shipping industry’s competitiveness, challenging requirements, and demanding needs, operations within a container terminal must be accurately carried out to achieve high operational efficiency, while also ensuring safety, sustainability, reliability, and profitability.

In 2020, INFORM’s Dr. Eva Savelsberg sat down for an interview with Matthew Wittemeier to share her perspective on global trends, technology, society, and environmental issues that were pushing and pulling the global supply chain. At the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the trends discussed were accurate. In INFORM’s latest article, Eva and Matthew have once again sat down for an in-depth discussion of the state of the industry.

In the rapidly-evolving ports industry, Hutchison Ports has emerged as a frontrunner in driving transformation through its relentless investment in research and development. The company’s commitment to automation and technological advancements is revolutionising container terminal operations, making it a preferred partner for technology and equipment suppliers worldwide.

As a terminal operator, whether that be in maritime or intermodal, when was the last time you stopped and asked yourself: “What empowers your operations?”. Many operators will likely answer this with ideas like good processes, teamwork, communication, coordination. All good answers, but these only scratch the surface.

It wasn’t long ago that a single shipping container required a new set of paper documents for every part of the supply chain it passed through. Perhaps every country, too. Put this into the context of a modern port terminal such as Antwerp Gateway in Belgium, which has an annual throughput of 2.8 million TEU, and you can start to picture the complexity and how time-consuming that would be on a global scale.

The maritime industry's operations and services depend on seamless connectivity. Vessels and offshore facilities require reliable means of communication to ensure smooth operations, crew welfare, and passenger services. However, traditional satellite connectivity can be costly, technology-dependent, and limited in terms of access and data usage.

The pressure on ports – and all links in the supply chain – is possibly higher than it’s ever been. As a mixed-use port handling a huge volume of commercial, industrial and passenger traffic, the UK’s Port of Southampton faced these challenges. Port operator Associated British Ports (ABP) knew its current ways of working and its use of public 4G connectivity wouldn’t help it overcome future challenges.

The Port of Antwerp-Bruges (PoAB) has developed a Digital Twin, which is essentially a digital replica of all operations occurring within the port's territory. This cutting-edge technology was implemented to create situational awareness for all employees of the PoAB, acting as the central component that combines all the port's initiatives within its digital nervous system.

Digitalisation provides opportunities for actors leveraging and operating in the self-organising ecosystem of supply chain and logistics to get aligned. Proactive co-producers empower their own operations through digitally created situational awareness capturing what others are doing and plan to do but also what happens/is expected to happen in their part of the chain.

Ports worldwide have shown great interest in the concept of a digital twin, and how implementing a digital twin could help increase efficiencies and port productivity. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that digital twins are currently entering the “trough of disillusionment” of the Gartner Hype Cycle, which should make everyone cautious about various vendor claims concerning their single digital twin product.

Predictability of goods delivery asks for planning data to flow, the COVID-19 pandemic taught us. Two years and a lot of talk later, it has become clear that achieving data collaboration in a fragmented supply chain is anything but straightforward. As centralised platform solutions have met their limitations, complementary decentralised methods of data collaboration are promising but still under development.