“Good things happen when you meet strangers,” said Yo-Yo Ma, the internationally renowned cellist and humanitarian.

One of the things that fascinates me the most is learning how an organisation has taken a new approach to its challenges and applying that learning to another organization, another industry, or another situation.

On the surface, these insights can appear completely unrelated. But dig a little deeper and there are so many similarities to discover. One very pertinent example is The Port of Rotterdam, which is innovating in new ways.  

As Europe's largest port, Rotterdam handles 140,000 ships and 461 million tons of goods a year. The task of managing the number of shipping movements plus the various assets needed to load, unload, and move these ships is an enormous undertaking. It’s made more difficult by environmental factors such as tides and weather. High winds can make manoeuvring a high sided container ship very difficult!

To help manage this volume of traffic, they created a digital twin for the port. The entire, real existing infrastructure with all operating procedures and all measurable environmental data is digitally mapped. This enables the Port to look at different scenarios and plan traffic movements in a completely new way. It also helps reduce shipping costs by allowing ships to come and go more quickly and safely and to carry more cargo. Shaving even an hour from the berthing process can save ship operators $80,000.

The challenges faced by The Port of Rotterdam and what they have achieved by their innovative approach are relevant beyond the shipping world. At its heart, it’s about the effective movement of assets from one place to another and the desire to optimise resources as a way of reducing costs. I’m sure you can think of many similar situations in other industries.

Next week I’ll be at CeBIT in Hannover. The Port of Rotterdam will be part of the IBM presence there along with a range of other examples of how we’re putting smart to work. You can find IBM at Pavilions 34 & 35. 

And please take a look at our other relevant content: 

CEBIT interview : https://www.cebit.de/en/news-trends/news/article_28230-854273

IBM Strange Exchange : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HwWRi5XyaQ