Royal Wagenborg Solves Ship Connectivity Challenges with Proof of Concept Built by Xebia on AWS

The Client

Royal Wagenborg, a 127-year-old Netherlands-based shipping company with a fleet of more than 120 vessels ranging from passenger ferries to cargo ships, needed to update the system it used to manage, analyze, and act on ship data. Its ability to communicate and process data was often hampered by connectivity problems, especially for ships traveling in remote parts of the open ocean. Already a customer of Amazon Web Services (AWS), it asked AWS for help and was directed to AWS Partner Xebia, which agreed to build a proof of concept. The solution was built with AWS IoT Greengrass, a cloud service to manage software on edge devices. Built over just a couple of months, the proof of concept showed that Royal Wagenborg will be able to eliminate problems with connectivity by managing data onboard, helping to reduce data management maintenance costs by 10 percent, improve data security by up to 80 percent, and increase fuel efficiency by 10–20 percent. The company plans to deploy the solution when it rolls out another improvement project to all of its ships sometime in the future.

Challenge: Struggling to Manage Onboard Data for Shipping Insights

Royal Wagenborg had long relied on a custom-built system to manage the flow of critical data to and from its fleet of ships. With vessels traveling around the globe, often in challenging conditions in the open ocean, the company struggled with intermittent connections and low-bandwidth issues that interrupted the flow of that data. Royal Wagenborg’s small IT team also found that maintaining the in-house system was costly and inefficient.

Nanne-jan ter Huizen had built the custom data management system for Royal Wagenborg and usually had primary responsibility for maintenance. But after he took on his current role as a data engineer, he found that he had less time to focus on those system maintenance tasks. The company also recognized that the system needed to be updated to align better with the organization’s IT modernization goals, so began exploring possible solutions.

When ter Huizen first learned about the advanced Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities available through AWS, he was intrigued. The shipping company was already using AWS for other services, and the IoT capabilities looked like a potential solution to Royal Wagenborg’s connectivity challenges. “I thought it would be very beneficial from an IT perspective to lower maintenance costs and simplify maintenance tasks while suffering less from connectivity issues,” ter Huizen says. “That got us thinking and talking to AWS.”

Solution: Building a Solution for Edge Device Data Analysis

After discussions with Royal Wagenborg, AWS recommended working with AWS Partner Xebia, which builds AI, IoT, and cloud-based solutions for complex technology challenges. The shipping company met with Xebia to explain its connectivity and maintenance issues, and Xebia agreed to work with the business to develop a proof of concept (PoC) using AWS IoT Greengrass, an open-source edge runtime and cloud service for building, deploying, and managing device software.

Xebia began by working to understand how Royal Wagenborg’s existing system operated, including what kind of data it managed and the connectivity issues it encountered as ships travel through different parts of the world. It then built a PoC that connected the onboard communication hardware to AWS IoT Greengrass and tested it using different simulations. The PoC was designed to enable near real-time data processing and metrics collection onboard ships, eliminating the issue of intermittent connections.

Using the AWS IoT Greengrass service, customers can process data locally at the device level and seamlessly connect edge devices to any AWS services or third-party services. AWS IoT Greengrass also uses machine learning inference and prebuilt components to help users quickly develop software applications for those devices. After an application is built, IT administrators can remotely manage and operate that software on edge devices without the need for physical access—this will enable Royal Wagenborg to keep its onboard systems up to date without time-consuming and costly travel.

The PoC also uses AWS IoT Core to provide seamless integration of vessel data into the cloud for centralized analytics. The solution is supported by Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon API Gateway for secure storage and easy data accessibility for insights and reporting.

Throughout the development of the PoC, the Xebia team worked closely with Royal Wagenborg to build the company’s in-house familiarity with AWS services.

“We enabled the Royal Wagenborg people to participate in the project so they could actually learn hands on with the team that was working on this, to get some understanding and knowledge of the Greengrass product so that they would be able to take over and manage it by themselves at the end of the project”.

Arend Offeringa, Cloud Ambassador, Xebia

The Results: After Successful Tests, Plan in Place to Install Solution Fleetwide

Simulation testing conducted over a couple of weeks showed that the PoC would solve Royal Wagenborg’s issues by managing data collection and analytics in near real-time, even in low-connectivity environments. Those tests indicate that, with a fleet-wide deployment of the solution, the company could reduce its current system’s maintenance costs by 10 percent and improve data security by up to 80 percent. The system could even help to reduce fuel consumption by 10–20 percent by enabling ship crews to act on data insights in near real-time, rather than having to rely on remote data analysis that’s often impeded by low bandwidth and connectivity issues.

to do so simultaneously with the deployment of a second IT project to its vessels. This will help to minimize the disruption caused by having to deliver new hardware to vessels and physically install those systems. “It is very labor intensive and very expensive to visit all our vessels all over the world,” says ter Huizen. “There’s lots of traveling involved and shipping expensive hardware around the world.”

When the deployment to all vessels is completed, he added, “I think Greengrass is going to deliver. When the system is more resilient, we get data flowing in more regularly and reliably. The applications and people relying on this data will benefit greatly from this improvement.”

“The development of Greengrass will help Wagenborg to innovate even faster and more agilely using the continuously growing diversity and amount of IoT data from our fleet.”

Berend Hut, Corporate ICT Manager, Royal Wagenborg

About Royal Wagenborg

Founded in 1898, Royal Wagenborg is a maritime shipping and logistics business based in Delfzijl in the Netherlands. It operates a fleet of more than 120 vessels, including passenger ferries, sea-going tugs, and cargo vessels that ship goods around the world.

About The AWS Partner Xebia

Xebia, established in 2001, is a software engineering and IT consultancy that’s headquartered in Atlanta and has multiple offices in the Netherlands, in addition to a presence in many other countries around the globe. It specializes in digital transformation, data and AI, cloud, software technology, and providing solutions to complex technological challenges.