In an executive interview, during the “Navigator 2015 - Shipping Decision Makers Forum”, the Managing Director of SetelHellas outlines his vision for the Maritime ICT market.
By Notis Ananiadis
Given the current market circumstances how do you think that the technological advances will help the Marine Sector to cope with and better tackle the new challenges?
Without doubts, the Marine Industry faces significant pressure: Global trade has decelerated and commodity prices have declined. The Environmental regulations become more and more stringent causing significant expenses-whileat the same time, the overcapacity is here to stay.
The ensuing struggle for market share, via fiercer competition and consolidation, underline the need for greater efficiency in an effort to reduce costs and to improve margins.
The answer to these challenges lies in technology innovation. A new generation of digital technological advances can bring substantial benefits to the Marine sector:
-Industrial Internet-based solutions can use data and analytics to deliver better insights on vessels conditions and performance, enabling predictive maintenance and reducing non-productive time, a major source of financial losses and inefficiency. Transparency and accountability drive performance improvements and enable better, sustainable business decision-making.
-Innovative Digital Models can simulate the vessel performance in different sea conditions…and this allows considerable improvements, resulting in greater operational efficiency.
-Novel Internet-Based solutions can provide better visibility on the vessel’s sailing circumstances, location and performance of entire fleets, improving routing, performance conditions, as well as speed and efficiency of maintenance and repairs.
-On Board telemedicine solutions can provide a range of seafarers’ wellness services and health care plans including the ability to monitor both physical and mental conditions.
-The Internet of Things (IoT) and the related applications can also mitigate the aging workforce challenge, by allowing experienced operators in onshore locations to monitor and support multiple vessels, and making it easier for workers to share, store and access the right information at the right time.
Despite the technological progress that you mentioned before, much remains to be done. Please clarify.
Reaping these benefits will require investment in new technology solutions and capabilities. Current business models will have to evolve towards a more “data driven” approach and allow a greater scope for cooperation and collaboration.
The suite of Digital Technologies that enables the IoT promises to turn most any vessel’s system or sub-system into a source of information about that component. This creates both a new way to differentiate products and services and a new source of value that can be managed in its own right.
What does IoT and Smart Ship technologies aim to achieve in order to contribute to the development of the entire world economy?
With these situations in place, IoT and Smart Ship technologies offer an unprecedented opportunity to transform the Marine industry. They can substantially reduce non-productive time in both onshore and offshore; cut fuel consumption; improve crew well fair as well as operational and safety efficiency for individual vessels and entire fleets; enable better market intelligence, planning, routing; and accelerate the development of green vessels!
What are Setel Hellas’ expansion plans for the future?
The worldwide economy will continue to expand at a moderate place and the global rebalancing will continue, with Emerging Markets (EM) to increasing their share of the maritime economy. For us, emerging Asia and Cyprus are poised to remain the most dynamic areas in the Maritime ICT market, followed by Middle East.
As such –after our expansion in Asia, we are continuing executing the final leg of Setel Hellas 2014-2015 plan (SEP) focusing on Cyprus and Middle East.
Our aim is to accelerate Setel's growth into more industries, across broader geographies and channels, and into additional market segments.
As always, our primary goal is 100% customer satisfaction. We are dedicated to maintaining and increasing the quality of support and service our partners and end-users have come to expect from Setel Hellas, without interruption.
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