We are highly excited to bring a top class content/presentation from the SMM Hamburg 2016. The Maritime Future Summit conference at the SMM witnessed a stellar start and we are delighted to bring you some interesting insights straight to your inbox.
One of the interesting presentations was by Mr Oskar Levander, VP Innovation, Rolls Royce on unmanned ships. MFAME’s readers have the option to read this write up with presentation images or listen to the audio track with the link below.
Listen to the Key points of the presentation on MFAME’s Sound cloud –
The main theme of SMM 2016 is digitalisation in the shipping industry. Hamburg Messe president and chief executive Bernd Aufderheide said: “Digitalisation is a key factor for the future success of the industry.” He added that alternative propulsion technologies is another key topic. “Alternative forms of marine propulsion are increasing in importance and we have a new hall dedicated to that topic.”
He said the Marine Future summit being held at SMM marks the event’s first special conference on digitisation and smart shipping, and is a theme running throughout other conferences at SMM. In addition, the exhibition features a ‘digital route’ through digitalisation-related products and services being displayed.
Remote Controlled ships can save 10 to 15% on Fuel
Disclaimer: Titles not intended to hurt seafarer rather to highlight the importance of crew and how they will be leading with computers in the days to come.
Mr Levander, presented a great insight on autonomous shipping and unmanned ships – which he thinks is the future of shipping. Prof Dr Volker Bertram commented that the concept of “Unmanned ships” was leaked out when Mr Levander was interviewed by The Financial Times after which the concept became viral. This added even more weight to the sphere of Big data and other discussions.
Mr Levander started his presentation with the theme “Disruptive Change”.
For those who want to understand what “Disruptive change” means – here is our explanation.
A disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leading firms, products and alliances. The term was defined and phenomenon analyzed by Clayton M. Christensen beginning in 1995.
Oskar added that the companies like airbnb, Uber, spotify did not exist a decade ago. And those companies which ranked in Fortune 500 list – has vanished now just because of lack of digitization.
“More that half of the Fortune 500 companies since 2000, have deceased just because they lacked digitization!” “This is definitely disrupting the market, however, this also gives new opportunities, and this disruptive change is now stepping into Maritime sector”, said Mr Levander.
Most companies aim to make ships energy efficient and optimize fuel consumption. “Why do we optimize only a small portion of the big picture, why we optimize only fuel part?” asked Mr Levander.
“It is not really the profit for the shipowner which we need to optimize, but the actual optimization is required at the consumer end” added Mr Levander, which opened the eyes of many who were listening to his spectacular insights.
Addressing to many maritime service providers and ship owners, Mr Levander said that checking the health of an engine is just a beginning and not the end of what is required. The keyword is “Total Awareness” where it is not just engine health but also total system health. Everything that happens in any ship will be monitored and controlled from shore. It is evident that in future, the ship and shore will be knit so closely that their operation would be seamless and well integrated. The world today has accepted a driverless car and the maritime world is not very far to embrace an unmanned ship. If this is possible in a car, an aircraft, and other means of transport, it is very much possible in shipping too – said the VP for Innovation at Rolls Royce.
Why “Unmanned Ships”?
Today most marine accidents are related to human errors and it is estimated to be about 75% of the total accidents. Most common reason for human errors are simple reasons like fatigue, lack of sleep/concentration etc. Thus, an unmanned ship eliminates such maritime accidents and makes shipping more safer/greener.
With unmanned ships, it is evident that the crew costs and other expenditures are eliminated. While this is very true, the direct costs saved without crew is only a small part. The bigger picture is that with no crew onboard, there is no need for:
- Air conditioning and refrigeration
- Fresh water tanks
- Fresh water piping and system
- Insurance premium on crew health
- Safety related investments and expenditures
- Crew training and competency
- Food/provisions
- There would no accommodation and bridge – saving in steel cost and reduction in weight of the ship, and reduction in air resistance too!
This list can continue on and beyond! Thus, by removing crew out of a ship (making a ship unmanned) one would get an immediate savings of at least 10 to 15%.
Oskar concluded his presentation with a great quote –
“The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create the Future!”
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Speaker Profile:
Oskar Levander
Vice-President Innovation, Rolls Royce Marine
Oskar Levander joined Rolls-Royce in 2012 as VP Innovation, Engineering & Technology, Marine. Before this, he has worked most of his career in Wärtsilä where he held various roles, such as Director, Concept Design, Marine Lifecycle Solutions. He graduated with honours from Helsinki University of Technology in 2000, with a MSc in Naval Architecture.
Oskar has been working mostly with the development of new ship designs, machinery and propulsion concepts for various ship types and emerging marine technologies. He has been deeply involved in the development of more energy efficient ships and he has been an active force in promoting the marine use of LNG. He is also driving the development of ship intelligence and the introduction of remote controlled unmanned ships. In 2011 he was included in “Lloyd’s List 2011 One Hundred Most Influential People in the Shipping Industry”.
Disclaimer: This video is intended for informational purpose only. This may not be construed as a news item or advice of any sort. Please consult the experts in that field for the authenticity of the presentations.
While a list has been drawn up by Mr. Oskar showing where the savings will be relised specially the removal services which are required with people living on board such as air conditioning , refrigeration etc we need to also consider some items where the cost will actually go up. We are aware that many stoppages and breakdowns of ships’ machinery occur due to poor quality of bunker fuels. Unfortunately the fuels supplied to ships are not of high quality as as for aircrafts or cars etc and very often are contaminated with chemical wastes leading to dangerous situations with ships coming to a halt at inconvenient times . In order to avoid such breakdowns and possible dangerous situations high quality expensive fuels will have to be supplied instead of cheap and low quality fuels which are now used on board ships. The difference in cost of fuels will be substantial. Please remember that cost of fuels form a substantial part of the operations expenses. Additionally there will be much higher degree of automation leading to increase in capital expenditure increasing the interest burden. Taking all this into account the savings may not be as substantial as indicated in the presentation.