DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY Q
talk from DNV GL about exchanging data – well, I haven’t seen anything offered,” he says. “But certainly, in terms of the manufacturers, I don’t think Wärtsilä will be willing to exchange their datasets with competitors, or with us. “I’m a fi rm believer that this is the only way
for the industry to really benefi t from the improvements we make by getting data from the ship. Let’s share it with everybody – we would only promote that. It really is the only way forward. “Shipping would benefi t immensely if there
could be an open data exchange protocol with all data available to interested parties – this is what the industry needs to drive the digital shipping revolution.”
Walled gardens If manufacturers do take the opposite approach, the implications are troubling. If the performance management fi eld is allowed to develop into a small handful of walled gardens, ship owners might conceivably end up worse off fi nancially than they are today. “You don’t want to have 20 different silos in
the industry with lots of data sitting inaccessi- ble to everybody else in some sort of proprie- tary format,” says Mantel, reserving particular criticism for the classifi cation societies. “DNV are taking a very aggressive
approach on performance management, and this is very diffi cult for us to compete with,” says Mantel. “The issue here is that the classifi cation societies are getting heavily involved in big data, while at the same time being involved in legislation. They have all this data, and they’re just sitting on it, using it to their own advantage, and not sharing it with shipping in general. I think the classifi cation societies should go back to their roots and try
It’s really important shipping companies understand what they want to get out of
it. Some want to get everything out of it – which isn’t realistic
to improve safety at sea, because that’s what is in their mission statements. “They’re supposed to be non-profi t organisations. Most of them are charities anyway, so they get all kinds of tax benefi ts, and at the same time they have all kinds of competitive advantages over manufacturers like us, because they might have thousands of ships on their registration. They can win orders based on the fact that they have these ships under their class anyway, so that relationship yields fringe benefi ts – it’s unfair competition. “Sometimes you read about certain
classifi cation societies sharing data with one other, and you have to wonder why they’re not sharing it with non-classifi cation societies.” But if there were to be a free available
exchange of information, with compatibility maintained between the various ecosystems and onboard devices, what could a company such as BMT Smart do to distinguish itself from its competitors? “You can develop clever benchmarking methodologies – there’s so much data and different applications. I don’t think there’s going to be any shortage in what can be done. At the moment, we have to pay for the data. “Wärtsilä is going to make data available on
their main engines, so MAN will have access to that data. Then what? These are challenges which really need to be overcome. I think for the digitalization to really pick up speed,
databases need to be open to everybody. Then you can really utilise the data to the fullest extent – and the more data the better.” At the moment, Mantel believes, ship
owners are still fi nding their feet when it comes to making use of performance management software. And it is essential that they have realistic expectations. “A lot of shipping companies invest in digitalization while looking at short-term gains. But it can take up to six to nine months to validate the dataset, before you can really be comfortable that the data you’re getting from the ship is accurate enough that you can use it to make decisions. The industry is getting frustrated by that. “It’s not trial and error, but it will take time
to get a proper dataset that your organisation can use to understand what they want. “I think it’s really important for each
shipping company to understand what they want to get out of it. Some want to get everything out of it, the ultimate cure-all solution – which isn’t realistic either. You need to understand this. Do you want to get charter party compliance, do you want to see how your ships are performing, benchmark your ships, how newbuilds are performing according to specifi cations? There are a lot of gains to be made with the technology. But, typically, they want everything, and if you go for everything you typically end up with very little.”
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