3 October 2019

In their project “How predicting when ships arrive boosts efficiency for an entire port”, they devised three solutions to reduce miscalculations in a vessel’s arrival time so as to overcome the overwhelming logistics at large ports where over 100 vessels with more than 20,000 20-foot containers transit.

One of the three solutions stood out as it included approximately 20 artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models to predict the arrival of vessels 14 days in advance to ensure that resources could be planned beforehand to meet demand.

The 3 solutions significantly increased the port’s efficiency, creating substantial cost savings within a mere 4 months of the initial proposal. Kaixiang and team raised accuracy by 3% beyond the client’s benchmarks for vessel prediction and helped the client save approximately US$10.2 million. Most importantly, the client used advanced data analytics technologies to drive disruptive operational changes in building their intelligent ports.

The port operator developed trust in the team as they understood its problem, engage fully with the organisation, and transform the operation. The team clinched an additional major project and it was subsequently one of the top three in the port operator’s global innovation challenge category of an internal competition.

Abhishek, another alumnus of the Master of Science in Business Analytics Programme, was also part of a project team that was selected as regional winner for driving exceptional client service category at BBWY. Besides understanding clients’ needs and develop supply chain dashboards, he also worked on conducting ideation workshops with the client.