Multimodal tracking for urgent deliveries
End-to-end visibility on land, air and sea
“There was a delay we did not know of. By the time I received a call from the agency Shellock had already notified me where the equipment was. This is very helpful to keep track of our equipment and clarify when it’s been delivered”
Jone Vikingstad, Innovation Specialist of DeepOcean
Introduction
DeepOcean provides equipment and expertise for subsea operations such as inspection, construction, maintenance, repair and decommissioning of subsea structures. With their proprietary equipment, in-house developed solutions, ready to use tools and fleet of vessels, they are prepared to deploy their services and engineering solutions.
Need
Owning a large fleet of assets allows them to attend any if not most operational needs. The value of some of their tools and equipment is very high. On the other hand, having such a fleet of assets deployed at very different and distant locations presents its own management challenges. It is necessary to know the actual status of that equipment, where they are deployed, and when they are going to be available for the following project.
Understanding at a glimpse the current state and latest updates of the shipments is critical. This information must simultaneously reach everyone involved in that operation, from the warehouse where the equipment is stored and maintained, to the project managers, logistics department and the contractor. A single source of reliable data is needed.
Challenge
In this case study, the equipment was urgently required at the operations site, north of Hammerfest. It was sent from DeepOcean’s base in Haugesund by road to Bergen’s airport. Then it flew to Trondheim and then again to Sandnessjøen, where it was picked by the vessel. It was a complex shipment with many involved individuals and transportation means. Right timings between the transports was crucial.
One of the flights was delayed, delaying in turn all the other transports. These affected parties downstream had to reschedule their handovers. This meant that there were people, trucks and a vessel immobilized waiting for this shipment. A quick update to all involved parties was necessary to adjust to this new schedule and minimize further demurrage costs.
Solution
At DeepOcean’s base an eShell was attached to the equipment. It wasn’t necessary to look in other portals or links to access the latest updates. A single solution enabled the team to track all stages of the transport independently of the means of transport. From the first mile, the project manager as well as all others involved had access to the location of the equipment.
The Shellock platform offers to set custom alerts about different parameters such as staying idle at a location. Before the agent at the airport registered the delay and called DeepOcean, it was already known that the equipment hadn’t departed at the expected time. DeepOcean was able to react proactively without depending on external updates.
Outcome
A sole source of updates tracked the shipment during all the journey stages. In this case the shipment was transported by road, via 2 flights and a vessel. Using traditional tracking of the vehicles or the workers, or by milestones requires integrating many different sources of data and still it lacks visibility of what is happening in between the checkpoints.
Given the complex transport chains and the number of involved transports and individuals, a one-time-setup solution was enough to cover the end-to-end of the voyage. All the team could focus on their tasks instead of configuring and integrating different sources of data, and had a solution for tracking the shipment. This not only freed up their time, but also conveniently kept everyone updated at all stages of the supply chain.
