Artificial Intelligence (AI), at its full potential, can help solve the world’s most significant challenges. Its promises to synthesize, analyze, detect patterns, develop insights, and determine predictions across various dimensions, beyond human capacity is what truly makes us marvel at its constructs. The idea that AI can apply across all industries ranging from health to supply chain further endorses its rising endearment. However, before the world can progress from machine learning into deep learning, it will only prove useful if the foundation already embeds the core blocks required in its current infrastructures and system architectures.

Why is AI relevant to the maritime and container industry?

Nations worldwide have now entered a low-growth economic reality, and the impacts of the worldwide pandemic that were not immediately obvious are now gradually coming to light. While some shipping liners and ports have projected a positive Q1, the epidemic has declared a pandemic in March. Consequently, reports generated for January to March are not accurate indicators, and we are likely to foresee a stark change in results for Q2.

Global trade relationships have had to readjust and implement new reforms to respond to the dwindling supply as crucial players of the supply chain have had to disconnect since the financial burden is too much to bear. Blank sailings, low cargo volumes, and a stark drop in consumer demand are a few of the many impacts ensued from the pandemic. Port authorities overwhelmed at the limited resources on-hand and forced to navigate through such unprecedented events have called for an imminent introduction of technologies like AI.

How can AI help achieve goals and visions?

AI may well be our savior, guiding us to answers we have been struggling to construe. Gathering data is an easy task; it is making sense of the masses of data that proves to be a challenge. Now that the world is adopting a more liberal approach towards technology, AI is gradually gaining traction and will soon deploy more intelligent integrated tools that combat problematic areas within operations. The availability in computational power doubling every three and a half months allows software providers to expand on AI applications and close the gap to achieving deep learning.

Port and terminal operators can heighten operational visibility by introducing predictive analytics. It is a subset of AI that resonates with machine learning and contributes significant value to TOS operators by determining the possible scenarios when dealing with bottlenecks and supposes the best alternative while factoring in specified parameters. Processing the data, then learning, and devising predictions at a magnitude and detail level impossible for an individual human to comprehend, inherently achieves optimization in operations, processes, and resources – something all ports and terminals desperately need in this time of uncertainty.

AI capacity broadens from its ability to draw on a substantial database of scenarios instantly, develop responses to questions, and devise a decision or device that can challenge a way that a human cannot. Its ability to naturally learn from previous answers, and continually improve its learning approach to meet requirements, further reinforces the power of AI. If this is the beginning of AI, imagine the possibilities as it progresses…

As previously discussed, real-time architecture cannot be easily accomplished. Though, with absolute knowledge of the core components, the foundation of a TOS can strengthen and cultivate a platform open to limitless capabilities. Paralleling these notions, TOPX Expert has leveraged an accurate depiction of a real-time architecture which has made shared- and in-memory possible. It has primarily served as the underlying foundation for expanding capabilities into new horizons like 自动化 in the Cloud, the 云计算 itself, and Artificial Intelligence. RBS has adopted an open mind to technological advancements which propel business processes but have not forgotten the essence of having a robust system built from a reliable architecture for the base of a TOS.

TOPX Expert has been able to retain its reputation for its proven solution of being true to a real-time architecture that can facilitate startups ready for operation with virtually zero wait time. This is credited by the single server infrastructure enabling shared memory, contrasting against the traditional TOS which generally requires pulling and downloading data from multiple servers then re-uploading once an action is confirmed. When more data is required for planning, the steps for retrieval will take longer. This directly proportional relationship mirrors transaction processing as it incurs a sequential queue of work instructions and can take long periods since one instruction is executed at a time. Consequently, data is also likely to become obsolete by the time CHEs receive these work instructions as vessel data or container data can change at any stage of the planning process. Therefore, decisions derived from fragmented data is not only liable to many errors but can accumulate into problems which enforce correctional strategies reprimanded for its resource-intensiveness.

However, shared memory maintains data-integrity and -interoperability while in-memory immediately loads all worked on windows in the previous workspace after initiating TOPX Expert. All steps taken for downloading and re-uploading is eliminated with in-memory, accelerating data processing to grant greater control for better decision-making. From this architecture, collaboration on tasks is made possible, dividing the total workload into smaller and manageable tasks. Flexibility in planning is also a result of TOPS real-time sustaining a combination of real-time, shared-memory, and in-memory processing. Faster task completion rates inherently evoke an enhancement in operational efficiency.

Time is a common metric used to measure performance and degree of efficiency in terminal operations. At RBS, immense efforts have been invested in developing software that addresses the complete operational spectrum, using time as the most valued factor shaping the architecture and overall infrastructure of the TOS. By accounting for time in TOPX Expert, processes are streamlined, owing to shared memory instigating faster startup times.

Subsequently, real-time processing has strengthened the infrastructure of TOPX Expert in expediting the benefits in increased workflow and data sharing. Therefore, the disparity drawn from transaction processing requiring micro-planning is incomparable with real-time processing as it enables shared memory for macro-planning, allowing terminals to increase their cost savings.

Choose RBS for a customer-centric TOS that always has your needs and prospects in hindsight.