Page 101 - ΝΑΥΤΙΚΑ ΧΡΟΝΙΚΑ - MARTIOS 2023

SMART SHIPPING

Mr Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos focuses on Artificial Intelligence and Big Data and how it repeat work already done by others and cannot required to perform in order to operate effec-
can enhance vessel performance. reap any of the benefits offered by solutions that tively. These include tasks such as route plan-
incorporate learnings from multiple companies ning (for minimum fuel consumption and safety),
into modelling processes. This pathway is a liv- responding to weather conditions, altering
ing nightmare – I strongly urge no company to speeds, watchkeeping, reporting, cargo planning,
consider it. and many others. These are currently part of the
Secondly (and very positively), technology has
core “in-house” skills all seafarers must master.
AI ΙS ALREADY rapidly advanced in results. Today’s solutions do However, as technology develops, these tasks
will, and are, becoming increasingly automated
more than “evaluate” a fleet’s performance - they
AN ABSOLUTE radically improve it (by up to 10% in DeepSea’s – often completed to a higher standard than
human workers are capable of.
case). These well-proven approaches are fast
NECESSITY becoming standard in the industry, so anyone The ‘captain of the digital age’ has a broad
understanding of all these areas – like the CEO
looking to “strategically” build these capabilities
in-house needs to be certain of their success of a company – and, importantly, understands
and able to beat what’s already out there. how they fit together to achieve a strategic goal.
For companies of all sizes, the game is now They understand which ‘levers’ they can pull to
about choosing the right tools. For example, achieve their objectives. Seafarers will develop
when was the last time anybody built their own specialisations that facilitate the interaction
internet browser in-house? between, and processes around, these different
Big data analysis is considered vital to boosting the operational systems. Their task will become, in many ways, a
performance of vessels. Will it become necessary for compa- New technologies are expected to alter the necessary specialised form of general management.
nies to employ people with relevant knowledge to perform skills set a seafarer should have. Does this refer mainly Critically, they will need to have a good under-
in-house evaluations of their fleets’ performance? Will this be to their general familiarity with technology, or are there standing of the limitations of each technological
possible for smaller companies, or will outsourcing become a explicit skills that will be deemed essential for seafarers system they use and what, in exceptional circum-
common practice? in the future? stances, should be done manually. Today’s airline
I would say the opposite is true. In terms of under- Very much in line with my previous answer, we’re pilots already work this way – their primary job
standing and improving vessel performance, we’re already seeing the same sort of transition hap- is not to be specialists in manual flight. Today’s
reaching the limit of what any shipping company can pening on board vessels. There are a series planes are highly automated, and most of the
do internally - regardless of company size. In fact, to of core functions that a vessel will always be flying is done by the aircraft’s computer systems.
be more specific, we are reaching the limit of what
they can do accurately.
That happens naturally in every industry – a technol-
ogy or approach gradually becomes increasingly spe-
cialised – and delivers more and more impact. There
is, of course, a complexity limit to what any company
can – and should – consider doing ‘in-house’. Until a
few years ago, ‘industry standard’ approaches to fleet
performance fell below this limit - so most compa-
nies invested in people and infrastructure to do this
themselves. Fleet performance became an in-house environmentally friendly
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these systems up to date as technology advances Becker Mewis Duct® (retrofitted)

by become increasingly expensive, and the risk of being
Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos stuck with a legacy solution becomes unavoidable.
Co-founder and CEO, DeepSea
At the same time, the company’s in-house teams can
Manoeuvring Energy-Saving
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