The Thome Group has opened a modern operations hub at its office in Mumbai following the strengthening of its fleet support function and as a major step towards accomplishing its decarbonisation goals.

The hub will complement the one currently at Thome Group’s head office in Singapore which opened in November 2017 to enhance its ship management services and reaction times to emergency responses.

The purpose of the Mumbai operations hub is to enable office staff to offer more value-added support to the fleet using a large video wall comprising of 10 LED monitors which can be used to display different monitoring and enterprise resource planning systems simultaneously.

The Mumbai hub will be operational 24/7 being equipped with state-of-the-art resources such as video conferencing, CCTV, UPS, and the ability of replicating the video wall at other locations like Singapore via streaming.

Manned by the vessel performance team, the facility will also assist with crucial monitoring and support requirements in relation to navigation safety, adverse weather reports, security, and transiting MARPOL Annex VI emission control areas. The operations hub has a high level of digitalization including automation, alarms, warnings, and email prompts to ensure timely actions by both the onboard and ashore teams. This leads into the Group’s vision of utilizing machine learning as a tool.

“The opening of another Operations Hub in Mumbai will reap huge benefits. The rapid developments in digital technologies have significantly enhanced our capabilities to acquire qualitative, high frequency and real-time vessel data which can be used to make informed decisions about the operational efficiencies of our managed fleets. We can now offer our clients up to date information and even greater improvements in our ship management services,” said Claes Eek Thorstensen, Executive Vice Chairman of the Thome Group.

“Furthermore, in times of emergency we can react instantly by accessing real-time, accurate information, allowing our crisis teams to take decisive action to resolve any issues quickly and safely,” he continued.

“This facility will enable our vessel performance team to actively track the parameters and conditions vital for the optimisation of fuel consumption and consequently help with emissions reduction. Our performance team will also proactively advise our vessel managers to make changes to achieve targeted CII ratings through speed optimisation, hull condition management, and appropriate adjustments to the operations of propulsion and auxiliary machinery. The facility will also assist with remote support for weather-based routeing and equipment troubleshooting,” said Olav Nortun, CEO of the Thome Group.