How will stable Internet change ERP on board of the ship?

As per the industry expert forecast, between 2019 and 2025 more than 18,000 LEO satellites will be launched into orbit which exceeds the current number of all active satellites in space by more than 10 times. Such technological advancement will facilitate continuous "always-on" connection on board of ships. The adoption of new technology puts legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems at risk of being substituted by software which relies on stable internet connection and provides remote access to the ERP functionality from the ship via the Internet and web browser.

Nowadays, a typical ERP in shipping considers the limited connectivity to the Internet on board of the ship, and thus, there has been a fundamental requirement to enable offline working. This has led each ship to be equipped with a server that hosts a local copy of the database and a few clients that communicate with that server via a private network. From the perspective of data transfer, ERP resembles a star where data flows from the ship to the central hub located ashore over the communication channel. To facilitate data exchange, ERP relies on a process known as asynchronous replication which assumes that there is always a difference between the source and the target.

Admittedly, there are some underlying benefits of the asynchronous method; however, there are significant drawbacks that accompany this method. First, records are never updated to the hub and replica simultaneously. Datasets are not copied in real-time but are extracted, split into data files, compressed and then transferred to the shore within a regular timeframe based on a predefined frequency. Since there is an update delay in the replicated-side databases, the ERP system is never updated instantaneously. On frequent occasions, the last modified records are overwritten and rolled back to the previous state by a data file which is coming from the ship with a delay. Second, the inappropriate configuration of data replication software negatively affects the parent-and-child relationships within the database. An attempt to insert a record into a secondary table that does not have a matching value in the primary table violates database integrity leading to an error which quite often results in data loss. Third, in cases where a transfer error occurs, a data package may become corrupted or even lost. When a missing package has been identified and recovered, it must be imported without sequence breaking by keeping the linear order.

The issues above may result in a delay of data exchange between the ship and the shore or even worse – they could lead to a complete dataset loss or damaged records. In the latter case, the lost records are recovered either from the backup or re-entered manually. This recovery process is often time-consuming and inaccurate. Moreover, to find the cause of the problem and fix it quickly, communication is vital. Office and ship engineers must cooperate and work together to resolve the problem and prevent any further database corruption. However, such cooperation requires a lot of training, skills and time. Due to the remote nature of ERP in shipping, verification and follow-up is a long-winded and complicated process. Even further, although a proper action plan may be developed and then followed thoroughly and executed, there is no guarantee that the system will function flawlessly, efficiently and reliably.

How will the introduction of LEO satellites tackle these issues?

If the monitoring and troubleshooting of replication could be avoided, then the amount of time spent on the ship-shore communication and troubleshooting would be eliminated, significantly simplifying ERP support processes. Moreover, by bypassing those issues caused by data exchange, the risk of data inconsistency could be mitigated, consequently leading to the improvement of data quality. Further, the simplified troubleshooting and avoidance of data exchange via replication are not the only advantages that this innovation brings. Updates of software versions and software backups could be transferred from seafarers to the shore, allowing on-board personnel to concentrate on their core responsibilities. From a software development and testing perspective, the innovation leads to much efficient and faster testing of new functionality. Preparing the on-board test environment and execution of prior-to-testing complex software upgrades will be relegated to history, decreasing the on-board workload, and significantly simplifying ERP management.

To summarize, although switching to a new ERP is always a protracted, challenging and expensive process, the benefits are greater than the costs. Exciting opportunities that are coming with stable and affordable internet access on board of the ship will stimulate shipping companies to switch from standalone legacy software to integrated ERP systems.