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INFORMATION Technology (IT) has emerged as a strategic tool for industry
practitioners in the maritime sector to gain competitive advantage, said
Researchers at Maritime Institute of Malaysia (MIMA).
IT is intensively used in many sub-sectors and a multitude of activities
that enable hundreds of millions of containers to be transported in a
speedy, safe and efficient manner around the globe yearly, they said at the
Marine Science & Technology Seminar (MARSTEC) 2007 held in Kuala Lumpur
recently.
The paper titled Leveraging the Application of Information Technology to
Gain Competitive Advantage in the Maritime Sector was presented by Nazery
Khalid, Armi Suzana Zamil and Farida Farid.
“Its application has become indispensable in key areas in the maritime
sector, namely in ports, shipping and land-based logistics, which support
the transportation of cargo and containers”, they added.
The use of IT is especially prominent in port operations.
“Ports are the lifeblood of international trade and a crucial facilitator in
moving much of the worlds' cargoes and containers.
“They have dramatically evolved from being entities featuring back-breaking
manual labour work to sophisticated infrastructures involving
state-of-the-art and technologically advanced systems and equipment.”
They said the growing trend of bigger and more sophisticated ships have
resulted in ports investing huge sums in IT systems and IT-driven
machineries to enable them handle those vessels in an efficient, effective
and safe manner.
Further underlining the importance of ports is their increasing integration
with other modes of transportation into the global supply chain.
The researchers also said that IT has assumed a critical role in port
operations and management, to the extent that it determines the level of
competitiveness of ports.
“The smoothness of modern-day port operations hinges on the pillars of speed
and efficiency; the two criterias that have become critical success factors
to facilitate the increasingly huge volume of international maritime trade.
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