Improving Productivity in Ports with the intervention of 5G

But for the COVID-19 pandemic, the world would have seen the advent of 5G technology. Experts suggest when 5G is deployed with the existing network architecture, it can increase visibility, data accuracy and cost saving. These benefits are more driven towards ocean cargo. This can increase the operational agility of terminals and drive process optimisations in various maritime functions.

Already various platforms such as port community system and single window system are immensely optimising processes to enable trade facilitation. With 5G, a paradigm shift is seen in terms of digitisation in the maritime ecosystem to ensure seamless trade facilitation. Here are certain transitional benefits which the maritime industry can anticipate with the advent of 5G.

Real Time monitoring to ensure Cargo Visibility

Shipping Lines, Consolidators and all others involved in the trade are always in the lookout for milestone updates on freight movement. While port community system in ports does have a feature for real time monitoring and deliver milestone updates, 5G seems to move ahead the process to the next level by analysing motion and environmental data from large parts of the port. This will yield predictive data in a much more comprehensive manner to anticipate demand shortage etc. Therefore, stakeholders can quickly set a strategy to void discrepancies.

Cost reduction benefits

Various trade facilitation tools and software are already offering massive cost saving benefits with complete online document processing. Whereas experts anticipate 5G to transform operations in a way that they could function autonomously with central control. On the other hand, the processes can get hundred times faster and document processing can happen in less than few hours. This means major cost cutting on the workforce and large physical space required to operate. Thus, achieving business synergies will be much easier than before.

Seamless connectivity and safety

5G aims to connect simple sensors with complex robots is what experts say. In maritime terms, this can probably be said as, 5G aims to integrate standalone software and tools with community wide platforms. This is to achieve milestone updates without much efforts and make EDI message triggering more automated as well as smart. Also, this will be hosted in a safe cloud infrastructure that comes with a robust application to ensure safety of information. Moreover, scalability and adaptability of deploying 5G is considered to be a game changing factor.

On-the-go process optimisation

A cargo community system and single window system does ensure data sharing across devices and mediums. Experts anticipate 5G to go a step ahead and enable milestone update sharing without any manual efforts. Moreover, this update sharing is believed to be on-the-go i.e. process updation as well as process functioning might be through mobile phones and other convenient devices.

Even though, 5G launch is delayed due to COVID-19, now globally, organisations have embraced digitization. Right from online slot booking to fleet management and various other processes are performed seamlessly with community systems and trade facilitation software. While this trend continues, one can anticipate that adaptability to 5G and other emerging technologies won’t be challenging.