Singapore, 25th October, 2021: Giantech Engineering Pte Ltd completes 6 week Industry 4.0 Conversion Programme with McKinsey & Company (McKinsey) and Ernst & Young (EY) to develop ARIEL, a intelligent maritime asset maintenance platform to manage life-cycle management of equipment onboard sea-going vessels.
In the last 2 years, sea freight costs have skyrocketed more than 400% with August 2021 setting a record of $10,714/FEU compared to just 1 year ago. With such cost and opportunity at stake, shipping companies can barely afford an extra day of unexpected repair costs or any down time at all.
Giantech Engineering, a 20 year old, home-grown local marine engineering company, embarked on a 12 months Industry 4.0 Enabler IHCI Programme, funded by SBF, to consolidate live data and past records into a action-focused, data-backed dashboard. This dashboard analyses vessel traffic, past engagement records, and each vessel’s equipment to prioritize service targets and maximize engineer engagement and deployment rate.
“Giantech is excited to play an important role in this evolution of how marine equipment should be taken care of in the future,” says Dilong Goh, Managing Director of Giantech.
“With this unique system, we not only can be more efficient with our sales and resource deployment but also help the maritime industry better manage their equipment in this endemic.”
Mr Goh dreams of a future where maintenance of various maritime equipment onboard ships are no longer an ad-hoc reactive processes for ship managers but instead a data-driven, proactive system where service, parts, options, and costs are clearly identified well ahead of time. Surprises will be a thing of the past.
Giantech’s first AI Tool was named ARIEL – the Asset Recognition Information Essential Log. This tool’s proposition was its ability to capture information about marine equipment and the ships they are on, from multiple vessels and maker data and predict breakdowns before they occur.
GOTRIX, Giantech’s second AI development, is an app-based equipment log book and troubleshooting support platform for ship crew. The platform allows collaboration between ship crew, superintendents and marine engineers to ensure equipment remain functioning even when the vessels are thousands of miles from the nearest port. This was launched last year under the Pier71 program.
The AI from all these initiatives is gleaned from Giantech’s rich history since 2001, representing equipment makers from different parts of the world and serving some of the largest fleets and vessel owners in the world.
Context
For the last decade, while the marine industry is driving towards autonomous (unmanned) ships, much of the maintenance and repairs of equipment on ships continues to be heavily dependent on ship crew and engineers traveling from shore. Before COVID-19, the industry was already facing an acute manpower shortage with less and less capable engineers willing to choose working in the marine industry as a life-long career.
Covid-19 travel restrictions aggravated this trend, with ship crew changes made extremely difficult. On-shore engineers who used to travel freely to board ships for urgent repairs have also since the start of the pandemic, been grounded at home.
Also, although the marine business is at all time high chartering rates, reducing cost rendered on equipment management is the main driver concern of every ship-manager. Traditionally, this cost cutting was achievable by a dedicated and experienced technical and commercial team, however, the surge in numbers of ships in the last few years and the growing complexity of the business makes such reduction in operating costs increasingly difficult to achieve.
Exciting Road Ahead
The current IHCI Enabler Program (https://ihci.sbf.org.sg/enabler-programme/) kicked off in September of this year with two phases over a period of 8 weeks. Each of the phases is taken by McKinsey and EY in turn, to develop and capitalize on existing data and processes and also to assist in the integration of digital platforms into Giantech’s daily operations.
After the program, Giantech will execute a year-long roll-out with its partners including ship managers and equipment makers to further develop the platform for the next few years. Each development cycle is structured with deliverables based on platform development, market research, partnership acquisition, team development, with the next big release of the platform expected in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Giantech is committed to play its part to reinvent how players in the marine sector can sustain and evolve itself on a ground-up level using technology. Together with their partners, they continue to create new alliances, and welcome corportes, research institutes, investors and inventors to join the alliances to collectively bring meaningful changes to this traditional but exciting ecosystem on the seas.
For additional information and partnership opportunities, please visit https://www.igiantech.com/contact-us/