Opening up to digital opportunities

You’ve seen an industry’s digital transition before, when the music industry moved to web-based applications. What can you bring from that experience to the very different world of shipping?

The music business might seem a million miles away from maritime, but the themes remain the same. There’s a lot of data already out there – so what do we do with it now?

Wilhelmsen Ship Services (WSS) has been selling the most traditional of maritime products, like ropes, since it started business. These haven’t changed that much for thousands of years, but now we are piloting a scheme that puts sensors inside. These sensors tell us exactly where and when this rope is deployed, so we can move from selling rope to just charging a fraction of the amount each time it is used. In other words these sensors enable us to move from selling a product to offering a service – in fact this is something we are trialling right now. It will also be safer and simpler from the regulatory perspective as the ropes automatically collect all the data.

So even products as basic as ropes are part of the ‘Internet of Things’?

These ropes are absolutely the bleeding edge of IoT: the sensors send the bridge an application that the crew can use on their computers or tablets, and this enables the crew to carry out better, far safer mooring operations, for example. The really cool part is that the next generation will be able to talk to winches. You will be able to see the stretch on the rope and even learn about that particular location, what kind of current you get from the tide in the harbour and what kind of tension you’ll want.

The point is this model requires almost no capex, making it cheaper to outfit a ship as you just pay for what you use as you go along. We are not there yet, but we will be.

But marine data capture has a lot further to go?

It’s not just about ‘vertical’ connectivity, although that is important. This allows owners and suppliers to watch over onboard equipment and take out some of the issues.

For example, boilers need chemical dosing but humans make mistakes, and every year, there are people killed by boiler explosions. So we have created an automatic solution; this carries out checks and dosing, keeping everything running at design levels: you can see the information real-time on a closed network. It’s this kind of repetitive, tedious but critical task that’s best done automatically while you keep a remote eye on it. There are many areas onboard which could benefit from the same approach.

Connectivity itself is now far easier and cheaper than before. Large players like NYK Line – which has around 750 vessels – have their own gateway devices; but as you know, they are only looking at their own fleet. By comparison Wilhelmsen has a very fragmented picture to manage.

To move forward I believe the industry needs not only vertical integration, but the combination of both horizontal and vertical. Look at the automotive sector: that’s aware there is an aftermarket from the day the vehicle is manufactured, so they build in a way to allow other systems to pull the necessary information out and make sense of it, otherwise it would be impossible to do any servicing. It is standard: in fact, you can take your car to almost any kind of garage and they can read it.

However, in the marine industry at present, data is stored in so many silos, in so many different forms that real visibility, real transparency, is lacking. It’s not impossible to change this, but we need to be able to clean up our data and standardise it so that, for example, turbine manufacturers will be delivering sensor information in a similar format.

It’s a huge job for the industry; it needs a broad partnership to be established – including class, already a trusted custodian of verified data – so all this information makes sense and we can start talking to one another properly.

Some regions have already begun the process. Fifty-five companies have signed up so far to an initiative in Japan that’s working to establish just such a standard. We, in the West, should be doing something similar.

Does this mean being less concerned about intellectual property and market advantage in the research stage?

Those who don’t make it accessible are going to lose out. Everyone has access to the same blueprints, it’s all on the web in one form or another. So, the big enterprise companies, the Fortune 500 or the top five companies by market cap value, their business models are orientated around open innovation, without the kind of protectionism we are used to. For example, the algorithms for Google Search, Maps and so on are out there and available for anyone to work with. The way we used to do R&D is losing ground.

Alexa is a great example. When the first version was built, it came from a small team and it had one skill, play Amazon music. However, they soon realised it could do so much more. The question was, ‘are we going to make these things ourselves, or give the tech away?’ The ‘old’ thinking is, keep control – keep it all to yourself.

But if you do that, you go down the path of a lot of big, monolithic enterprises with vast teams, they are playing for safety and believe that by doing this, they can win over the smaller players but the opposite is proving true: in fact even if it’s a big organisation – like Amazon – you want smaller teams. We know now that for efficiency, you have to abide by the two-pizza rule: that is, you never want to create a team that can’t be fed with two pizzas.

The new thinking is, don’t try to do it all yourself, spread it around. But make what you have to offer so useful that other people will want to hook into it. This is what the Alexa team did. As a result, it has now more than 30,000 skills, built by other companies that use it to amplify their own products… these are everyday appliances like Ikea lights, Whirlpool dishwashers and so on. It is a far easier and far cheaper option for the appliance manufacturers themselves, and one that’s much more future proof than a single company could put on the market. It really is common sense: people don’t want hundreds of controls, one for each device, they want one control for hundreds of devices.

How do you see that open approach being applied in the maritime industry?

Someone needs to create the connecting layer, and do it openly so other people can bring in their own expertise – not trying to make it a ‘closed shop’. Giving access to developers is key.

Even this sector is evolving. Today you have infrastructure as a service provided by Google, Microsoft or IBM, so now anyone with a great idea can create a company without needing the workforce to constantly update the IT, something that’s very costly and very difficult to do. In essence, it puts 10,000 software developers on your team. That’s going to spark a lot of innovation that will cross over into the marine environment.

Isn’t there the potential for open development to lead to safety issues?

There will still be rigorous testing. However, safety critical actions are already being taken over by machines. Landing in Oslo airport in winter, some days there is so much fog the pilot announces the computers have taken over, people are quite happy about it. They trust them to be that smart. It’s actually safer to allow computers to do it.

Push that further, it’s going to be more reliable to let the machines also take on the learning about what could compromise safety. They are faster, and better at spotting anomalies.

But there’s a future that’s within range right now. The next phase comes from developing ‘digital twins’. You should be able to sit wherever you want and have a 3D replica, of a ship or other asset, show up on your PC; that will help you to see not just what’s happening onboard a vessel at present but what happens if you try out, for example, other kinds of power configuration. That is bound to give integrators and marine systems manufacturers a whole lot more insight and a new design tool.

What about some of the other digital-enabled technologies on the near-term horizon?

We’ve been looking into drones. Wilhemsen has also bought a lead stake in a 3D printing company; is a very interesting space to be in. If someone wants to produce a part, you don’t have to manufacture a series – you can build just one. The potential is for an almost unlimited stock, wherever you want it. To date we are present in close to 2,500 ports and in some there will be 3D printing capacity. We are developing partnerships with verified companies that own the patents files and soon we will be able to produce parts on their behalf – fast and cheap.

Data gives us the chance to move away from the old, vendor-driven model to a business that’s shaped by demand – one that’s more efficient and sustainable. But to make it happen we need to be able to work more openly, sharing our data and inviting developers in to help us build better products – better services – together. It’s a longer-term perspective, but it’s the one that will win.