Narayan Venkatesh, co-founder and CEO of Tilla Technologies, on what airlines can teach the shipping industry about crew planning.

The shipping industry is not exactly known for its high pace of digitalization – and yet a lot has happened in recent years. Changes and innovations are visible in all areas of work. In all? Well, not really. Crew planning is still handled in more or less the same way as it was twenty years ago.

Sometimes it helps to think outside the box to find an explanation for a phenomenon that is right in front of our eyes. In this case, we take a look at an industry that has many similarities to shipping, yet has developed very differently: aviation.

Both industries move goods and people around the world. They are global by nature. They are heavily regulated and risk averse, and the assets involved are very expensive.
But while aviation has long been a highly digitalized industry – including in the area of ​​crew planning – this is only partially true in shipping. Why is that?

How is crew planning different in aviation?

On average, a flight lasts a few hours, whereas a sea voyage often takes weeks or months. In aviation, crew members complete several flights per shift or week. In the event of disruptions or delays, crew members are automatically and immediately informed and can even use a bidding system to decide when and on which flights they will be deployed.

Things are different in shipping. Seafarers often wait weeks for information about their next assignment, which can take place at any time. Delays and disruptions in crew planning quickly lead to chaos. Crews can only dream of real-time updates; instead, they are informed by email or phone call. The existing digital technology is usually outdated and takes place in silos. It should be clear that this means stress for everyone involved – from the crew manager to the employees of the travel agency involved and the crew members – and is also prone to errors. It is also clear that this is not efficient and therefore more expensive and time-consuming than necessary.

Why was aviation digitized so early and so comprehensively?

Passenger air travel began in the 1920s and grew steadily during the interwar period. Initially, passenger and crew scheduling was done manually. In the 1940s, the increasing number of passengers required a better solution. American Airlines, then the largest US airline, developed the “Magnetronic Reservor”, a computer-based system using magnetic tape technology. This enabled faster and more accurate reservations and processed information for 1,000 flights up to ten days in advance – a major advance for modern aviation. The Reservor soon became obsolete, however, and in the 1960s IBM developed the “Semi-Automated Business Research Environment” (SABRE), also for American Airlines, which enabled the processing of tens of thousands of bookings daily.

This is how the digitalization process began. While passenger numbers in the aviation industry increased massively and with it the number of flights carried out and the need for on-board and ground staff who had to be deployed in all aspects of air traffic, passenger numbers in shipping fell. Today, the transport of people is only an insignificant part of global shipping. Instead, the transport of goods by ship has grown continuously, but the transport of goods by ship simply requires far fewer employees on board than is the case with passenger transport.

In other words, for decades, air transport has transported many more people at much shorter intervals than sea transport (this applies to both crew and passengers), which is why aviation was forced very early on to come up with efficient, automated digital systems to manage this complexity. In shipping, on the other hand, this complexity – although it has grown steadily – was never large enough to force fundamental modernization and digitalization.

Further reasons for aviation’s digital advantage

And there are more reasons: Aviation is a much younger industry (shipping, on the other hand, has existed almost as long as humanity) and is therefore more open to many technical innovations, as younger industries often find innovation easier. Their higher safety requirements and the greater willingness of many airlines to invest have also contributed to digitalization. Large first movers such as American Airlines set new digital technology standards that the rest of the industry followed. The fragmented shipping industry lacks such pioneers and, unfortunately, also industry-wide standards that would facilitate the adoption of new technologies at industry level.

What about shipping?

As described at the beginning, crew changes in shipping are usually handled by email and telephone. Every disruption brings with it the information of various stakeholders – the seafarers are often the last in the information chain, which does not make their job any better. For shipping companies and ship managers, these processes are unnecessarily lengthy, expensive and prone to disruption. This raises the question all the more: Why don’t we do it more like the aviation industry?

Because circumstances do not force companies in the shipping industry to do so. And because there are always changes that seem more urgent, above all decarbonization. Anyone who does not ensure EU ETS compliance will have to pay high fines. Anyone who organizes their crew planning in a cumbersome way by email will not. Industry-wide standards that could give digitization a boost are also not in sight. Yet a lot is possible, or at least could be in the future: Full transparency for everyone involved, including seafarers, through automated communication. Scalability. Time and cost savings for companies. And thus not only more efficiency, but also better working conditions for everyone involved.

What needs to happen for things to change in the shipping industry?

What has long been a reality in aviation is not yet technically possible in shipping. But aviation also started small. Our industry also needs first movers who try out and improve existing solutions – or develop their own and, if possible, make them available to other companies (like American Airlines with the Reservvisor, which was ultimately used not only by airlines but also in other areas of travel booking). At the same time, it is also up to software providers in the area of ​​crew planning to communicate more clearly what is potentially possible – because most companies already use a variety of software solutions and are reluctant to force more and more solutions on their employees. This is where education is needed – and really good software that brings real improvements.

The road to more efficient and secure, fast and transparent workforce planning processes is still long, but it is doable. However, more companies need to realize that the effort is worth it.