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Industrial Summit Working for Common Standards

Industrial Summit Working for Common Standards

Published: June 19, 2018

Representatives from major shipping lines, ports, e-navigation initiatives and solution providers met in Rotterdam May 24. The common views and alignment of Smart Navigation (Korea), Sesame 2 (Singapore/ Norway) and Sea Traffic Management (EU) as well as the support from the International Task Force for Port Call Optimisation means that suppliers can invest knowing that the solutions will work across the world.

There were more than 40 commercial actors present and the quotes from the participants illustrate the importance:

Ben van Scherpenzeel, Chair of the Port Call Optimisation Taskforce, said: “A sign that Port Call Optimisation is on the worldwide agenda. Shipping is a global business. It is therefore important that we strive towards global standards and ensure that they are able to work from port to port. In the ports, it is important to get everyone who provides a service to the ocean-going vessel on board. Our first goal is to exchange the most basic standardised information. If a terminal is expecting a vessel at a given location at a certain time, matters such as time and position need to be communicated unambiguously. In doing so, we shall gradually make progress.”

Andreas van der Wurff of Maersk Line: “It is great that all parties concerned with shipping are involved in this. As a company, you cannot go it alone. Shipping companies will benefit from the fact that ports and service providers are also engaged in the shipping industry.”

“Although we are not all from the same sector, we are mutually dependent on one another,” explained Frans Caspers of Shell. “Without standardisation, we will continue buffering and suffering. Switching from single scheduling to collaborative scheduling puts us in a better position to manage the margins and buffers. All of this requires transparency; a platform on which to share information and standardisation.”

“In recent years numerous parties, including STM, have been working on the issue of nautical information exchange,” stated Per Setterberg, Operational Project Manager of the STM Validation Project. “We need to prevent them becoming parallel projects. During the workshop in Rotterdam, we demonstrated that we can work together, that we are willing to learn from one another and that we are able to adopt each other’s standards.”

Read the full press release from Port of Rotterdam.

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