Ship as a Digital Enterprise

Transforming Maritime Entities into Digital Enterprises

Technology is fast changing the landscape around us. Think of how much change technology has brought in our personal lives in the last 25 years or so. Evolution of computers and processing capabilities, internet and mobile phones have changed the way we spend our work or leisure hours.

Change in the maritime industry is also inevitable, but the way our industry functions, a change needs an effort from everyone involved - charterers, owners, operators, flag states, class societies, equipment manufacturers, technology companies and other stakeholders. Each of them has a role to play and in that process, they need to change as well. In this session, Dr. Piyush will highlight fundamental drivers which will make this change happen in this industry.

High speed bandwidth availability at low cost and advent of enabling technologies for several shipboard operations and maritime activities is attracting an unprecedented focus for change. Investors are pouring in money. Equipment and system providers are consolidating their capabilities. Class societies are busy preparing a framework for digital compliance or autonomous operations of vessels. And every major shipping company has a digitalization officer looking at opportunities.

With the maritime environment gearing up to embrace change, a team of engineers, data scientists, technologists, academicians, business strategists and marine professionals are bringing technology at the forefront, with support from flag state and guidelines from class societies. Leading product development for his team at Alpha ORI, Dr. Piyush showcases SMARTShipTM, which is targeted towards digitally enabling all floating enterprises with cutting edge technologies - IoT for ships, machine learning for routine shipboard operations and cloud based big data applications for optimizations and predictions.

The first batch of SMARTShip are already in operation, and perhaps very soon business will not be usual for those who have not embraced technology.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Piyush Raj is Director- Product management and heads the product development team at  Alpha ORI Technologies, a technology start up, headquartered in Singapore and with offices in Silicon valley and in India.  Funded by Industry giants, Alpha ORI is working towards transforming the multi trillion maritime industry to operate as a Digital Enterprise.

Before joining Alpha ORI, Dr. Raj was working for DNV GL, where his last role was of an Innovation manager and principal consultant, providing technical advisory and training services.  He also headed the Maritime Advisory and Maritime Academy for this leading classification society. Earlier part of his 20 years association with the maritime industry was spent sailing on board and working in a shipyard in various technical and managerial capabilities.

Dr. Raj is a marine engineering graduate from DMET, Kolkata and a Doctorate in operational research from IIM Lucknow with maritime operations as his key research area.

He is a member of RINA and Institute of Marine Engineers, India and has several publications to his credit.