Cross-Organizational Assimilation of IT - Exemplified by the ChainPORT Initiative

Once a business reaches its maximum operating or output capacity as per the available resources, then the only way to further increase its capacity is to adopt innovative and smarter ideas. If the modern and state of the art technology is not inducted, then the business activity degenerates and its opposite is progression and that would not be possible without the openness of mind to the inclusion of new technology in the fields previously dominated by humans. The port of Hamburg adopted smartPORT initiative and on the basis of the analysis the outcomes of this very initiative it went on to not only join but become a very vibrant advocate of the ChainPORT initiative. It could only mean that there was something good in the smartPORT initiative which encouraged the Hamburg port to join and advocate for the ChainPORT.

Port of Hamburg is surrounded by the city of Hamburg and now is now at a stage where it cannot be expanded any further as no surplus or additional land is available. Now there was only one plausible solution available to the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) and that was to incorporate technology into the port operations to increase its efficiency. For this cause the HPA was aided by the University of Hamburg. The research and analysis following the adoption of the smartPORT initiative was done by the University’s technical wing. The results of the smartPORT initiative emboldened the HPA to become a stalwart campaigner of the ChainPORT initiative, smartPORT initiative was for the individual port and the ChainPORT initiative being for a global cause.

One of the most important projects of ChainPORT initiative is the collection of information and then relaying it to the control room and the relevant departments in real-time. For this purpose, sensor of many types are being used like gas leak detectors, road traffic simulators, CO2 detectors, availability of road lane to truckers, river navigation equipment like depth detectors for ships, automatic locking and unlocking mechanisms for doors and small bridges and terminal slot management system. Other areas under the hammer of digitization and reformation are 3-D modelling of the port infrastructure, planned and scheduled repair and maintenance works, virtual modelling of the ship and vessel modelling for accurate guidance to the vessel crew, inter-connectivity of the staff on the ground, wall of information in the central control room-where all the information regarding all the departments is available and provision of interactive screens at each department so that no piece of information is missed by the relevant department, use of surveillance drones in case of emergency situations, ability to share and receive information to and from other ports, traffic forecasting systems and cyber security systems monitored by professionals.

A new principle based mechanism for research purpose was developed. Its purpose was to ensure a guided, relevant and developmental research to be conducted by professionals under the guidance of the port authorities, customers and consumers. This new mechanism was named Action Design Research (ADR). Professional researchers were hired to do the job of researching and devise the proper methodology for gathering of information and suggesting solutions to the problems of inefficient port operations. It was formalized that regular meetings of the port departments would be held with the researchers and the solution providers to ensure a smooth process of innovative technology assimilation. Another aspect of holding such meetings was to satisfy the port operators and in return gather information to improve the technology and make it more flexible and general so as to enable it to be adopted by other ports as well. The bigger stage of information sharing was regular and scheduled meetings between different port authorities of the region and then of the continents. This would enable the different port authorities to share their experience and expertise on adopting different technologies for the efficient running of the port. In this way they would also be able to suggest some valuable changes to the (under development) technology based on their experiences. Another important and integral part of the port business are the customers and the consumers. They were also taken into the fold and meetings held with them to discuss with them port’s impending technology innovations and seek their view point to those developments. They were also asked to give in their suggestions so that the port operation become more flexible to them and facilitate them. The idea to involve so much people to discuss, assess and then give findings on this issue is to involve all the stakeholders in this developmental cycle and as a result develop an end product which would be beneficial to all of the stakeholders.

Internet of Thing or IoT has been incorporated in many industries and departments and their experience was utilized and their recommendations considered when IoT into the ports. IoT does not only concern about internet related things and projects and instead it is a very broader term which encompasses; internet-oriented vision, a things-oriented vision and a semantics-oriented vision. Schrimer et al, focused on the ‘things’ aspect of the IoT and devised the smart bricks concept, it was aimed at developing a 3-D model of the architectural perspective to analyse the architecture of the buildings in a digital way and pinpoint the problems and suggest solutions to them accordingly. This was to be done in the same way as particular road sensor would consider counting the number of cars appearing on a particular road as a road-segment (combination of physical and object).

Innovation diffusion is the process where an innovation spreads through multiple organisations. This process is completed in multiple phases like gaining information, persuasion of individuals, decision to adopt or reject, implementation and confirmation. The same sequence of the events is also adopted for the assimilation of innovation. Only in this way cross-organisational assimilation of innovation could truly be expedited. Persuasion is undoubtedly the most important and the most challenging phase of them all, it is based upon relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trial-ability and observability this was published in a research paper of Everett Rodgers in 1962 titles Diffusion of Innovation.

An integral part of architectural training is the ability of reading maps. This has been passed on the port authorities and the decision making bodies. An available option was to make scale model maps of the port but all the information could not be displayed on the maps like the locking and observation systems could not be represented on maps. The solution was to make many maps of the same infrastructure showing different facilities.

An example of the solutions offered by the technology is for the parking problems. Delays caused by availability of parking space at the port, prediction of the volume of road traffic, destination of the truckers and their estimated arrival time, identification of the trucks via number plates identification and provision of the gathered information from analysis of the simulated results of the data to the truckers so as to enable them to plan their journey pertaining their turn to receiving their shipment. Further-on a comparison needs to be drawn about different ports and conclusions be made on the information being compared. To add-on there are four types of relationships that exist between the hierarchy of the port authorities and functioning departments, these include linked to, part of, extends and implements relationships. Some of these relationships could be physically seen like the part of and other could just be observed like linked to. To ensure incorporation flexibility into the models role-based models should be encouraged.

So how do we attribute the different components of a map on an equal scale and make it understandable to the audience. It had to be a combination of both the traditional methods and the technology. In addition to this digital maps could only be used to some extent and not everywhere, depending on the audience. Generally, numbers were used to mark particular attributes on a printed map and the numbers labelled according to the attributes and written under map key. In digital maps the map keys could be linked to other data bases and maps on the bases of one to one, one to many, many to one, many to many and one to none. Other numerical information like number of vehicles passing a bridge, number of vessels docking at a port terminal could be recorded in tabular or graphical form according to yearly, monthly, weekly, daily or hourly data slabs. The ability and capacity to keep digital maps made it much more flexible to simply introduce the changes to the meta model without any hiccup as per the requirement or recommendations of the audience. This is the editing tool of the digital technology. The mutual understanding between different ports also enabled the practitioners’ to record the data in mutually understandable way and then share it with other ports and researchers. Documenting and enumerating multiple data was a difficult task before and now it is being done automatically.

The availability of the maps and models in a digital form reduced the gap between modelling and visualization. The incumbent changes could be incorporated into the meta model instantly and present the changes in visual manner before the observer could visualize his recommended changes.

One question that needs to be discussed, what happens to the process of data collection once the research comes to an end? Well for that purpose researchers could leave a well-established and automated data collection system in place when they leave. This needs to be done as the port workers and operators are likely not supposed to be well acquainted with data collection and ultimately could ruin the entire proposed project.

At present only a handful of the ports have adopted the technology suggested by the researchers and they need to be persuaded. The limited number of ports undergoing reformation mean that very less generalised technological solutions would be available based on the limited amount of information available. Only few projects could be given a go-ahead and the rest still need a lot of working and have big rooms for development.

We all know that there are vested interests of the people at the helm of power and they all try to protect their interests. And they are the most difficult to be persuaded to change. So it is needed that we try to convince such people with facts and figures and leave the decision to them as to what to adopt and what to reject but we have to make it certain that they at least take something instead of nothing.