The Many and Wonderful Iterations of Shipping

People love labelling things and extrapolating trends. The maritime industry is no different, and so it has been with much energy and boundless enthusiasm that the latest revolution has been termed, “Shipping 4.0”. What does it mean though, and can we leap straight to Shipping 5.0?

STAGES OF LIFE

Ok, so we need a bit of a scene setter. We have to know our history before we can begin to confidently begin to predict the future. So before we can even think about Shipping 4.0, what were iterations 0, 1, 2 and 3 about?

Shipping 0.0…well, that was probably Polynesians in their log canoes traversing across the Pacific. Using patterns of the seas, they established trade and allowed cultures to flourish. We can perhaps also lump in the Greeks and Romans into this, and perhaps even the Vikings.

Next came Shipping 1.0, which was when the Western world began to really harness the power of navigation and looked to push out the boundaries of trade and dominance. Empires were forged and the shape and flow of the modern world began to be shaped.

This is where the structures of modern shipping were built, foundations such as insurance and Classification. Many of the aspects of the industry which we can recognise today were born in this first iteration of modern shipping.

THE EVOLUTION CONTINUES

Then came “Shipping 2.0” — sail gave way to steam and eventually heavy fuel oil. This is the age in which the certainties of power and propulsion made shipping into an engine of modernisation and trade.

Which brought us to probably the 1980s onwards and the real explosion and growth of containerisation. This was Shipping 3.0, suddenly ships were part of a supply chain. Ports were growing and growing, the hinterland was ever more important not just for production but for consumption too. Whole nation-states changed their identity as either the demand from the West or the supply in the East was harnessed.

Shipping 3.0 was about a changing role and responsibility for the industry, there was legislative change too — with the likes of OPA90, ISM and ISPS all beginning to shape how shipping companies not only existed but how they saw themselves and were ultimately seen by others.

That growing sense of accountability, began to evolve further and technology and connectivity meant the leap into Shipping 4.0 was the next stage of the evolution and it has proven to be quite a leap.

WHAT IS SHIPPING 4.0?

Finally, after all that history, we arrive at the present day and Shipping 4.0. Which is a development in line with the shore-based “Industry 4.0” or the fourth industrial revolution.

This is, as I’ve written before, about the ultimate aim of value creation. Using the supply chain and all the links within it to bring more than the sum of the parts to the overall aim of moving stuff around the globe.

This has brought maritime informatics to the fore, and we have seen digital enabling technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data Analytics (BDA) and cloud computing brought to bear on a most conservative and traditional industry.

It has not always been a simple or easy journey, in fact, it has been a real challenge to design more efficient business models for companies who have long focused on only their specific piece of the jigsaw. It is one thing to try and use data to strengthen the value chain, but if each or any single link seeks to go it alone, then the house of cards collapses.

ONE SMALL STEP FOR SHIPS

At all steps, across all the iterations the implications for seafarers, for shipowners and for society have been immense. It is a big leap to go from a log canoe, to a slave rowed trireme, then to a fully insured and Classed clipper, then a diesel-electric box ship. These are massive changes in their own ways, but perhaps nothing as big and fundamental as the change to Shipping 4.0.

This is where shipping becomes part of the wider picture, with the sea merely a node rather than the marine adventure of the past. Perhaps the congestion at ports the world over has shown us that we aren’t quite ready to oversimplify the act of taking cargo across oceans and expect it to simply arrive when we demand it should. The sea has a habit of making fools of us all, as has done across all of shipping’s industrial iterations.

The leap between Shipping 3.0 and today is not only a big one, but it is a fundamental change. Going from isolated yet human-controlled entities to having data-driven decisions shaping the ways and means of going about the day-to-day challenges is quite an ask. In Shipping 4.0, the maritime informatics generation sees data as inputs and outputs, it sees predictive decisions made and the machines are learning all the time.

Digital capabilities are crucial, as are the mechanisms to respond and react to them. As I have long stressed, data is just a set of facts. What are you going to do about them? So all this becomes about one question, are you ready, willing and able to listen to what society, charterers, ports, cargoes and ships are telling you? That is the challenge, and those that can and do, they are the ones who will be ready to take the next leap into Shipping 5.0.

THE FUTURE IS NEARLY HERE

Some see that Shipping 4.0 is about autonomous ships, and the incredibly important issue of decarbonisation. I am not so sure, I think we are still not there yet and there is another fundamental shift in application and attitude needed.

These iterations are about actual reality, and the fact is, we aren’t really, fully yet ready for crewless ships and we are not yet truly yet ready to have the clean fuels which our future ships need. We are on the cusp, but not ready to jump.

To me, Shipping 5.0 is still some way off. When it comes, it will truly be the change to end all changes. In this future, ships will be as different from today, as the log canoe from the Ever Given. We are likely to see smaller vessels but many more of them, fleets of autonomous vessels crisscrossing the wet parts of the supply chain infrastructure.

We will finally see the foundations of our maritime informatics work come to fruition. In this future, the players won’t be merely glued together by data, they will be woven together in the fabric of the supply chain. The weft and weave of transport demands being met by the owners of the million-strong fleet which keep all things flowing. The future is set to look very different indeed, but we have to look in the mirror today and understand how we can make it a reality.