The whole world is drifting towards digitalization at a rapid pace. The dotcom boom in the 2000s to the COVID pandemic, we've seen only an uptrend in the shift to the dominion of computational systems in every industry. The Maritime industry is never behind. In fact, it was one of the first to embrace the changes around. For instance, the industry was the first to adopt Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standards back in the 1980s. And the scene is no different today. The industry is taking long strides in the new niche.

“Digitalisation definitely isn't an entirely new concept to shipping, it’s been happening for 20-30 years in specific areas that needed greater efficiency", says Mark Warner, Senior Director, Inmarsat Maritime. Maritime industry had to deal with compelling and immediate problems as it controlled the major portion of global trades. Efficiency and reliability was always maintained to cope up with the rising demands. Thus, the industry always stood at the forefront in the digitalisation wave.

The shipbuilding industry always ran to adapt to the evolution of novel designing methods with the use of CAD softwares, thus making the process more efficient and innovative resulting in unprecedented modeling. Plus, many different software manufacturers have been incorporating their own utilities into the system and portfolios creating a system of systems that cover the entire end-to-end product life cycle. The different systems had their own ecosystem and their unification was done through interfaces, which led to a heterogeneity of data and products, with a significantly high cost and very low efficiency.

One of the pillars of Industry 4.0 is the connectivity of the systems. Therefore the natural evolution of the systems used in shipbuilding must be towards a single and completely integrated platform, that we can call a digital platform. For this platform to be efficient, it must be supported by the 3D model and product data. Therefore, the core of the platform must be the system that is capable of giving birth, evolving and developing the model, as long as it is in a single location. CAD systems, such as FORAN, AVEVA, Catia, etc. are so powerful that they are capable of integrating into a single database, geometric design and product attributes that can be at the core of digital platforms. This can enable the marine industry to enter the 4.0 revolution. To that end AI and ML can help a lot, the advent of which is paving way to revolutionize the industry in ways never thought of. It packs in the potential for radical designing and experimentation through simulation. Analyzing the so hyped Big Data in the industry hopefully live upto the dreams enabling much innovations in the field.

In a nutshell, merging the elements of Data Science through digitalisation with the long evolved shipbuilding industry techniques has great potential ahead that can change the industry from grassroot level.