In-depth | TECHNOLOGY FEATURE
From Eco-ships to Smart-Shipping: revolution or evolution?1
Te digital revolution will transform merchant shipping in the coming decades. Slowly, but surely, this revolution has already begun, driven by ecological imperative and economic expediency. Clarksons research president, Martin Stopford, analyses how the revolution might develop and the benefits companies can gain from it
R
evolutions should have a simple goal. Te goal of shipping’s last revolution, containerisation, was to “put cargo in a box”. But, this simple objective disguised a profoundly complex change which took 30 years to implement. “Automated shipping operations” is the goal of Smart-Shipping, a revolution which digital technology is making viable. Today’s shipping hardware is going
nowhere, and smart-shipping offers a new direction. It will be even harder than containerisation to implement, but the rewards are compelling.
The case for smart-shipping Sir Ronald Swayne, Chairman of Overseas Container Ltd (OCL), the UK’s first container company set up in 1966,
observed that
“technical development in liner shipping has not been so much a continuous process as an occasional leap forward, precipitated by a compelling call for change2
. “Containerisation
was not about the “box”. Container boxes had been on the roads in North America for years. It was about new ships, new terminals and new company organisations needed to keep general cargo moving through ports congested by manual handling systems3 For liner companies aſter a century of
.
moving general cargo in multi-deck liners, it was a traumatic change with many worrying shortcomings. Today, the digital technology revolution
is lurking in the wings and applying it to sea transport is an even more daunting prospect. The industry’s design and engineering
1 2
At the time cargo liners were spending half their time in port “like floating warehouses”. It took “some 40,000 manhours to discharge and load at both ends of the voyage”. An unsustainable situation. Kummermann H (1979) p 113
3 18 The Naval Architect January 2015
technology is mature and can no longer deliver major hardware improvements to deal with the challenges of higher fuel costs, climate change, emission regulations, and changing customer needs. But, digital technology is an untapped resource. Sea transport needs to think about making the same leap that transformed “mobile” hand phones into “smartphones”, but on a much bigger canvas. Te technology is not revolutionary – the
sophisticated digital technology is in our pockets and many businesses are already using it. Te revolution lies in reorganising the shipping industry to make use of this technology, and in the process providing services for its customers and regulators that they don’t even know they need (how
Te paper is based on a paper given at INMARCO-INAviation -2014, Mumbai, India 11th December 2014 Swayne R.O.C “Te Container Revolution” in Kummerman H. (1979) Ship’s Cargo, Cargo Ships MacGregor Publications Ltd, page 113
about publishing real time emissions data on your website?).
Ship technology is running out of steam You may well be wondering why sea transport needs a Smart-Shipping revolution and if it does, whether it would be a transformation on the scale of the container revolution? So let’s dig a bit deeper. When, in the 19th century, fossil fuels
replaced sail; and steel replaced timber hulls, sea transport became an industrial process. Ships became small factories moving cargo. Over the next century marine engineers built better engines; and naval architects developed super-efficient steel hulls driven by propellers.
Technological revolutions should be simple says Clarksons research president Martin Stopford
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