We’ve entered a digital era of shipping.
In order to stay competitive, ship owners and managers need to rely on innovative technologies to achieve cost savings, improve performance, and position themselves in the market. Any investment to reduce operating expenses (OPEX) must be able to provide sustainable impact — and be able to scale to accommodate future needs as the operating landscape changes over time.
The industry today is already starting to move from individual players to more collaborative ecosystems with integrated stakeholders. It’s now a necessity to deliver more value to customers. This can be achieved by implementing innovative digital solutions like artificial intelligence.
According to a study by KPMG, artificial intelligence is one of the key technologies to optimize operations, enhance efficiency, and reduce costs.
Wouldn’t it be advantageous to invest in a system that simultaneously addresses multiple OPEX categories and enables overall reduction of OPEX? And what if you could reduce costs while maintaining high levels of quality, safety, and operating performance?
Further benefits will come as increased communication and collaboration possibilities between ship crew and shore, increased knowledge sharing, and the ability to drive continuous improvement fleetwide.
How Artificial Intelligence Reduces Operating Costs for Shipping Companies
Based on the example of a post-panamax dry-bulk carrier with an annual OPEX of around 2.7m USD, the main OPEX categories and share of total OPEX are as follows :
The primary operating costs for vessels fall into crewing and crew-related costs, stores, spares and lubes, repair and maintenance, management and administration, and insurance. KPMG estimates that digital solutions can reduce OPEX by 15% or more.
A solution like ShipIn’s AI-powered FleetVision offers video analytics that continuously monitors, detects, and logs discrete events onboard. The platform proactively alerts ship and shore management to anomalies, hazards, and inefficiencies regarding security, safety, maintenance, navigation, cargo, and other operations, and compliance in general. All monitoring rolls up to a dashboard, which includes analytics, making it easy to benchmark performance, conduct remote audits, and unlock optimization potential.
What does that mean in action?
Visual Analytics Powered by AI Can Reduce OPEX
There are many ways that an AI-powered visual analytics platform can save money across your entire fleet, including:
Repair & Maintenance
- Easy monitoring of planned vs actual activities carried out including completeness of jobs carried out and compliance with procedures including PPE usage
- Collaboration and remote guidance from onshore superintendents for onboard crew
- Easy monitoring of routine activities (e.g. steering gear inspections, engine inspection rounds, drills, toolbox talks, etc.) and flagging if routine activities do not take place
- Utilization profiles of equipment, as well as early warning in the case of equipment anomalies (e.g. smoke/oil mist, water ingress) to avoid more costly breakdowns later on
Stores, Spares, and Lubes
- By helping to ensure that equipment and machinery is properly maintained, unnecessarily high consumption of spares and lube oils can be avoided
- Stockkeeping activities (e.g. removals from stock) can also be automatically detected and digitally logged, enabling easy monitoring and auditing.
- Use of consumables (e.g. paint, chemicals, oils / lubes) can be automatically detected and digitally logged, enabling easy monitoring and auditing of correct usage/wastage, and protect against theft
Crewing and Crew-Related Costs
- By providing much greater visibility into onboard operations it is easier to assess behavioral competencies and identify improvement areas and training needs, also supporting new OCIMF guidelines
- Easily monitor the result/effect of training and corrective actions to improve safety culture and drive continuous improvement
- Foster crew retention by providing crew with innovative tools to do their job more safely and efficiently
- Help protect crew – who are often first the first to be blamed in the case of damages, incidents, etc. – from false accusations and even legal repercussions
Insurance
With both H&M and P&I insurance increasing, it could be possible to avoid premium increases on renewal, or to benefit from more dynamic premiums by demonstrating a reduced risk profile through:
- Indicating focus and investment in improving fleet safety, security, and risk mitigation
- Early hazard detection through visual analytics and real-time intervention capabilities to minimize loss
- Accurate and immediate incident investigation capabilities, available at the office
- Increased insights and analytics to drive continuous improvement and enhance safety culture
Management and Administration
- Simplify processes, bridge ship-shore information gaps, increase ship-shore collaboration, and achieve efficiency gains
- Reduce the cost of non-compliance as onshore teams can easily monitor compliance with own procedures and regulations and help to create positive behaviors
- Incident and claims management is drastically simplified with automatic logging and categorization of events detected by the system – evidence is available in near-real-time ashore without the need for “back-and-forth” communication with the vessel or hours of manual review of recorded video
- Active alerts with respect to vessel security enable better management of piracy, drug-smuggling, stowaways, theft, etc., – especially useful at night or in low-visibility areas
- “Superintendent Visit Effect” – onboard performance and quality of work is at its peak immediately surrounding a superintendent visit, which can be sustainably maintained as a regular baseline due to the ability to easily conduct desktop audits
Learn How Tanker Company Sees Potential $400,000 Annual Gains Per Vessel By Deploying ShipIn’s FleetVision Platform
Improve Your Fleet Performance With Visual Analytics
ShipIn’s FleetVision uses AI and Computer Vision technology to analyze CCTV video in real-time with the ability to automatically detect anomalies and events, provide active alerts, and display all events, actionable insights, and analytics in onboard and onshore dashboards which allow for problems to be fixed quickly resulting in an increase in efficiency, productivity, and ultimately, reduced operational costs.
The FleetVision system is therefore much better suited to support a sustainable reduction in OPEX and increase in overall profitability, while simultaneously improving safety and security.
