DIGITALISATION
DELIVERING RESILIENT SUPPLY CHAINS
Credit: Pixabay
As supply chains become more complex, with decentralised production and distribution centres, vessel and cargo owners need two key things: Transparency and clear communication, writes Jason Berman, CCO, S5 Agency World
30 | SPRING 2022
The need for digitalisation is also driven by rising market demands for improved sustainability. While cargo and vessel owners have their own commitments to operating sustainably under the Sea Cargo Charter, it is their customer and their customers’ customers, that will apply the greatest pressure for improved sustainable practices and provide a licence for them to operate. Increasingly, both these stakeholder groups are putting their money where their mouth is and pushing companies to adopt sustainability as a business-critical function. Delivering sustainability Across the shipping industry, sustainability and digitalisation go hand in hand as data helps to highlight and subsequently minimise inefficiencies, in particular reducing fuel consumption in last mile of voyages and minimising unnecessary emissions. Lengthy port waiting times around the world further demonstrate the need for quicker adoption of digitalised port services. Insight and analysis of data collected across 8 Lengthy port waiting times around the world further demonstrate the need for quicker adoption of digitalised port services
Credit: Pixabay
A fundamental step to achieving this is the digitalisation of port services, which will give individual companies more visibility over their port transactions and operations and increase the resilience of their systems. As the world recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, the underlying importance of efficient and resilient port operations has never been so important. However, the shipping industry still lags behind other sectors in its use of digital technology and a resistance in the industry to change. This slow adoption of digitalisation in port services prevents fleet operators from using data and systematic communication to improve efficiency, sustainability and costs on their port call their vessels make. Historically, port operations have been managed by a multitude of manual processes, such as emails and individual phone calls. In fact, many companies still manage their port calls and monitor vessel progress using desktop spreadsheets. This approach is no longer sustainable in a world demanding more accountability and faster decision making from its supply chains. The additional data management handling work required of manual processes not only reduces productivity, it leads to a fragmented approach to port services that is no longer suitable in today’s interconnected world. In other words, the increasing complexity of supply chains requires increasing resilient business models, which will also drive the digitalisation of port services. The Covid-19 pandemic has helped to accelerate this trend. Increasingly, businesses are seeking to spread risk by bring their operations closer to home, using networked manufacturing, or spreading their activities across multiple geopolitical regions. This is the case across a range of key sectors, it means cargo carriers will find themselves calling at more new and unfamiliar ports in the future.
8 Digitalisation can give individual companies more visibility over their port transactions and operations and increase the resilience of their systems
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