Achieving Nirvana Through Technology

 How many of us have tried multiple strategies to reach Nirvana (an ideal condition of rest, harmony, stability, or joy). I know that I have tried meditation, yoga and chocolate, yet I am still in search of that place of peace and well-being.  It is certainly a place where the maritime industry could benefit, but is similarly elusive.

DNV GL has worked to identify 10 trends to bring humanity to technological bliss (see Maritime Executive article below).  No, this is not your children’s fantasy of 23/7/365 gaming, but areas where maritime—and the world—will benefit in the next decade.

Their list includes:

Digital Twins– A digital twin is “a dynamic virtual representation of a physical object or system across its lifecycle, using real-time data to enable understanding, learning, and reasoning.”

Fourth Industrial Revolution– A subset of this revolution is the concept of supply chain 4.0, where digital technologies are applied on global value chains creating a world where virtual and physical systems of manufacturing and transportation are working together to streamline production, enable mass customization and facilitates new business models in a transparent way.

Nuclear fusion– Reliable energy means that nuclear power is still touted by some quarters as the panacea to the world’s energy needs.  Fusion reactors will be inherently safe, produce little radioactive waste and have very low fuel cost (the main fuel, Deuterium, exists abundantly in the Earth’s ocean: about 1 in 6500 hydrogen atoms in seawater is deuterium); making them tremendously attractive as future sources of energy.

Prognostic Maintenance– Prognostic maintenance (also known as condition-based maintenance, predictive maintenance, or simply prognostics) is the ability to know the condition of equipment, and to plan and perform maintenance accordingly before a critical failure. This has been a goal in many industries for many years. There are two schools within prognostic maintenance: data-driven prognostics and model-based prognostics.

Sensors and the IoT– Enable much better situational awareness, enabling asset owners to know things immediately and remotely that, without these technologies, would have been very difficult (or very expensive) to know at all. This enables decision-making based on more accurate facts.

This is only half the list, but I am not yet feeling the bliss.  Maybe next week’s installment will provide that Zen!

Keep optimizing,

Carleen