EuropeMaritime CEOTech

Kongsberg Digital: Today’s newbuilds are digital-ready

Collecting data, contextualising and using it in the correct way is increasing in importance, says Hege Skryseth, executive vice president of Kongsberg and CEO of Kongsberg Digital.

Skryseth, who today leads one of three subsidiaries of Kongsberg has held several top-level manager roles at international tech companies such as Microsoft Norway and Geodata (ESRI).

With decarbonisation as one of the main future challenges, she believes that the first step for the maritime industry is to improve the operations of the existing world fleet through digitalisation as the larger part of the sector has not yet reached its full potential.

“Most newbuilds now entering the market are “digital ready” or even at an advanced level of digitalisation, which is an important strategy to be competitive in an increasingly challenging environment.

“We are also seeing that retrofits are digitalising, which makes it evident that it is worth the investment, even for a few years’ time,” says Skryseth.

At Kongsberg Digital, the biggest challenge for the larger part of the sector is tied to decreasing margins for shipowners and operators.

“Finding ways to increase margins will make them less vulnerable to market fluctuations and allow shipowners to invest in value-enhancing technology, giving early adopters a comparative advantage.”

Kongsberg Digital has developed a platform, Kognifai, that supports its innovations such as Vessel Insight for the maritime market.

Digitalisation through Vessel Insight can be used for fuel and energy management, business intelligence and benchmarking vessels towards each other. According to Skryseth, this contributes to reducing fuel consumption, increasing efficiency and thereby reducing carbon emissions.

“Small modifications can have big impacts on larger vessels, such as hull shape, hull coating and ECO speed,” she says.

New and improved technology is believed to be the solution for transforming the industry to meet zero-emission vessels by 2050.

Skryseth finds that end-to-end value chain digitalisation, autonomous vessels, maritime digital twins and data-driven operations are key words. “In all cases, digitalisation is pivotal in this transformation.”

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