Smoother sailing for shipping management

Like the cargo ships that lumber in and out of ports, shipping is generally slow at getting up to speed.

This is certainly true with regard to IT, in which shipping, one of the world's oldest global businesses, has largely remained in dry dock compared to other transport sectors, particularly in improving management efficiency systems. Progress has also been slowed in part by a lack of comprehensive data coordination, communications and decision-support tools for its complex and widespread needs - at least until now.
With the completion of the IST-funded MARIDES project earlier this year shipping companies are a step closer to having an innovative tool at their disposal to enhance coordination, accelerate decision-making and ultimately boost efficiency and therefore profits.
"The MARIDES project focuses on improving the decision-making process in the chartering departments of shipping companies... assisting people working both onboard and onshore to deal with the mass of data, and provide accurate, fast and online consultation," explains project manager George Mourkousis of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
An intelligent decision-support system,MARIDES combines an intelligent decision-support tool that aims to complement rather than compete with human shipping managers; an information extraction technology to create dynamic databases of ships, cargoes and routes; and a communications intranet to link all the different actors in the management chain together, from chartering operators down to ships' crews. The system differs from other software packages in that it does not simply automate one area of the management process, but offers comprehensive support and coordination in the key areas of the shipping business where the margin for increasing efficiency is greatest.
Though it has been generally slow to adopt new management technologies, the shipping industry - due to its dynamic, information-heavy and complex nature - is nonetheless optimally suited to using them.
"Managers have to deal with vast amounts of dynamic information," Mourkousis notes, "and although there are numerous software products available to them, they simply seem to trust their intuition and their own market awareness."
However, the project manager indicates, those existing products lack innovation and unlike MARIDES tend only to "automate existing procedures... thereby failing to provide the means to assess business opportunities." MARIDES, on the other hand, assists in assessing data, enabling shipping companies to make more effective business decisions. Perhaps most importantly, it does so without competing with human managers.
Creating greater efficiencies,The decision support system in itself has huge potential to assist shipping companies, given that it filters the extensive data managers have to deal with and provides them with the most practical and efficient options. These can then be used as a guide together with a chartering manager's intuition to select the most promising cargoes, ports and routes, among the multitude of other variables involved in moving goods from one corner of the globe to another.
This is particularly important at present, at a time when the worldwide economic downturn has made the need for shipping firms to increase efficiency strikingly evident. As world production levels have slumped so to has international trade, and with shipping firms carrying the bulk of world commerce they are bearing the financial burden of the decline. According to the European Community Shipowners' Associations, world sea borne trade has stagnated at around 5,500 million tonnes since 2001, while trade in terms of tonne-miles (the volume of cargo transported per mile) has remained below 2000 levels since then. In addition, rising insurance costs and tougher environmental regulations have eaten into shipping lines' accounts.
The eight organisations from Greece, UK and Italy that developed the MARIDES system are confident that its use will revolutionise the way shipping lines' function by providing them with a unified, state-of-the-art tool to improve efficiency, which in turn will translate into lower costs and higher profits - crucial at a time when competition is elevated.
The comprehensive nature of MARIDES could in the long term also help shipping firms avoid some of the mistakes they have made in the past, especially with regard to estimating future market demand.
Indeed, some of the problems facing the maritime transport sector at present are of its own making. Buoyed by healthy profits in the 1990s, shipping companies went on a spending spree ordering new ships by the dozen - by some estimates the world cargo ship fleet grew by 10 per cent in 2000 - so when trade started to fall off there was too much supply for too little demand and shipping rates suffered.
With transport costs running into the thousands per ship per day, the need for companies to choose the most efficient routes, the most profitable cargoes and the best business partners is critical to competing in an increasingly tight market.
Though the MARIDES system is a prototype at present, the project partners are considering developing a commercial application possibly based on the Internet and with the ability to be tailored to individual companies' needs - a prospect that promises shipping companies cost-effective, faster and smoother sailing in the future.
Contact:,George Mourkousis; Theodora Varvarigou,Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,National Technical University of Athens,Patission Street 42 ,GR-10682 Athens ,Greece,Tel: [phone],E-mail: [e-mail]; e-mail: [e-mail],Source: Based on information from MARIDES
The IST Results service gives you online news and analysis on the emerging results from Information Society Technologies research. The service reports on prototype products and services ready for commercialisation as well as work in progress and interim results with significant potential for exploitation.

Countries

Greece, Italy, United Kingdom