💸 Fraunhofer CML publishes economical study on MASS
🎯 German The Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services CML (Fraunhofer CML) presented Study on the Economic Implications of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS). Motivation for the study was basically that there are a lot of technological feasibility studies about MASS around, which is often quantitatively referring to potential economics MASS benefits, but never deeply analyzing them.
Group of authors including Julius Küchle, Research Associate, Hans-Christoph Burmeister, Head of Department Sea Traffic and Nautical Solutions, and Hannah Pache, Business Developer, under editorial of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Carlos Jahn, Director Fraunhofer CML, quantitatively analyze which effects can MASS have
🔹 on ship operating costs?
🔹 on supply chain efficiency?
🚢 A 190m handy-size bulk carrier operating in Baltic sea was taken as reference vessel for the study, so economical issues are considered according to its specifics.
In terms of ship operating costs, the study sees a competitive level with reference to the costs already for direct remote control solutions, which however becomes increasingly better in case of more monitored autonomous operations. Further, Fraunhofer CML investigated the effects of MASS on shipper’s perspective with reference to inventory costs in the supply chain, meaning the potential impact of using smaller, flexible fleets of MASS instead of large manned vessels with respective higher sailing frequencies and thus lower lead times. The assessment is not taking any specific MASS technologies into account and instead only assessing MASS expected effects on logistics to quantify the competitiveness advantages gained in inventory holding costs. All assessments took place on a generic use case example for wood pulp transportation in the Baltic, but the methodology and results can be adapted to other shipping cases as well.
📝 Economic Implications of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) extended study outline available for download at Fraunhofer CML’s 🔗website, full study require preregister to get information how to obtain it.
📃📷 Source: Fraunhofer CML