Wärtsilä uses start-up mindset to accelerate Intelligent Vessel outcomes
Wärtsilä opens the first of four Digital Acceleration Centres to speed up the innovation and co-creation with customers on a range of new business models and solutions, including the industry’s most advanced intelligent vessel and other ground-breaking projects, the company said in its press release.
The technology group Wärtsilä is changing the clock speed of the company by using Digital Acceleration Centres (DAC) to accelerate new business ideas. The first Digital Acceleration Centre has launched today in Helsinki, Finland; the second will open in December in Singapore and two further acceleration centres, one in Central Europe and one in North America, are anticipated during 2018. In addition “pop-up” DACs will be tested with customers around the globe.
Opening DACs is an integral part of Wärtsilä’s digital transformation, which will shift Wärtsilä towards a data-driven, insights led, smart technology company that enables sustainable societies.
Wärtsilä’s first Digital Acceleration Centre in Helsinki has already been running as a beta version for a couple of months and several projects have been accelerated there with different partners. Current projects include for example co-creation with one of major cruise companies. One of the greatest successes incubated so far in the Helsinki DAC is Wärtsilä’s Intelligent Vessel Strategy.
Digital Acceleration Centres provide a great opportunity to work in close relationship with customers, start-ups and partners to deliver greater value quickly to customers.
Wärtsilä’s start-up acquisition, Eniram, has worked together with Royal Caribbean Cruise Line (RCL) for years in optimising fleet and ship operations as well as reducing emissions and cutting fuel costs. Building on this experience, Wärtsilä and RCL are now working closely together in a partnership to develop all aspects of the intelligent vessel further, using the DAC to accelerate some of the prototyping.
Wärtsilä has also partnered up with Accenture Interactive in the Digital Acceleration Centres to speed up innovation and go-to-market as well as to help grow Wärtsilä’s own talent for creating world-class digital services.
The latest example of the Intelligent Vessel strategy being driven at pace is Wärtsilä’s acquisition of Guidance Marine Limited, a technology leader in the marine industry for sensor solutions relating to dynamic positioning and other vessel control systems.
Further examples include the successful remote control navigation test in August carried out together with Gulfmark Offshore, the U.S. based operator. The testing involved driving the vessel off the North Sea coast of Scotland through a sequence of manoeuvres using a combination of Dynamic Positioning (DP) and manual joystick control. Although the test vessel was in the North Sea, the remote control navigating was carried out from the Wärtsilä office located in San Diego, California, 8000 km (5000 miles) away. The testing was carried out using standard bandwidth on-board satellite communication. No land-based technology was used for the communications between the vessel and the remote operator work station.
