Kalmar: tech opportunities for ports

Speaking exclusively to Port Strategy at TOC Europe 2018, Mr Kaunonen felt that a lot of the sector-shaping opportunities were coming from “technologies that are becoming ripe to use to benefit the industry”.

Discussing automation first of all, the president claimed that because automation is not completely proven, a lot remains to be done to improve it and that that could firstly be done through standardisation.

“I really think that we have to standardise processes and take care of exception-management,” he said.

“I’d like to start with connectivity at the higher end and then come to the lower end — connectivity, interfaces [and] data exchange.”

The data game

Mr Kaunonen moved on to “shaping the industry with data”.

“With data the most important thing is that everybody should understand that sharing, caring and having the data available will be beneficial for everyone,” he explained.

“People are saying: ‘That data is mine — how much are you willing to pay for it?’

“That doesn’t make any sense, because data is something that you have to use and leverage to your benefit.”

He added that Kalmar now has 5,000 connected mobile equipment units and is receiving “tonnes of data”, with the Finnish lifting equipment business now going through it and asking how it can better its units, processes and maintenance.

Regarding big data, Mr Kaunonen claimed that “nobody really understands what it is”, adding that easy forms of leveraging it need to begin to be found.

“How about we change the data between the port operations and the carriers and the shippers and so on? We can do a lot of improvements here,” he suggested.

The Kalmar president also said that the most important thing is sharing the data, arguing that it is pivotal that a party has a lot of data in order to be able to make good choices.

“We still need to do something and [do] some work with the industry related to [the idea that] sharing is much more important than having the data to yourself.

“But … you have to make a mental change — is the data there to be used, or is it there to be protected so that nobody sees what is happening?” he said.