Este documento identifica 7 retos a los que se enfrentan las empresas navieras de todo el mundo. Los datos se recogen observando a muchas empresas navieras que utilizan diferentes soluciones, políticas, procedimientos y estrategias. Proporcionamos una receta de cómo superar los retos y contribuir así al rendimiento general.
7 challenges in technical ship management
Freight rates are still low for most cargo, and many shipping companies are facing difficulty generating profit – or at least the profit margin they require. Not much can be done about freight rates as they are a result of the world market and the necessity to move cargo around.
However, shipping companies can ensure efficiency in managing their ships by making sure that the fleet comply with safety regulations and is operated without breakdowns and detentions. This way time schedules can be met and customers stay satisfied.
1. Data communication between ship and shore
Even with constantly improved data communication available on the ships, there are still limited bandwidth. This means that ships cannot stay online, and a lot of data communication must be transmitted in packages.
The ships are constantly requesting spare parts, inventory, food and other things from the office with the expectation that they will be delivered as requested. Otherwise, it can impact the performance of the ships. Therefore, it is very important that the information is sent without errors from the ships to the office. If anything goes wrong, the communication principles must be able to deal with errors and resend the required information. Not all data communication and systems are able to do this, and too often we have observed frustration from ship crew when data is not transferred as expected.
The best practice seen in this area is when the communication lines and principles are reliable and self-repairing. For example, in case a package is not transferred correctly, the systems will identify the problem and resend the package to restore information. These lines must be completely reliable and ensure smooth and secure communication. Due to the high cost of data communication, it is always vital that data is compressed in the most efficient way.
2. Ease of use
“Garbage in equals garbage out” is a well-known phrase in systems dealing with user entered data. Operation of ships today is often dependent on data entered by the crew on-board. Decisions are made, and actions are taken from the data that is available in the systems. Therefore, we are dependent on the quality of the data. Data is not valuable if it is not correct or of a sufficient quality.
One of the main reasons for wrong or missing data is that many software systems today are still made to be operated by experienced IT users understanding the complexity of functions and data. Although the crew onboard is well-educated, their main job is not to operate computers, but we are still dependent on their usage of systems. Training of the crew is costly and often a logistic challenge as the crew reaches shore in many different locations. It is, therefore, important that ease of use has a very high priority in software applications. Training on-board the ships is difficult and access to support more challenging.
