Managerial Issues in the Adoption of Digital Twins by Shipping Companies in Greece

Maritime industry is experiencing the influence of industry 4.0 solutions and investments. A commercial ship is comparable to an industrial plant and several analogies can be found between the two worlds. Digital twins represent the convergence of the engineering and the digital information technology worlds into the so-called cyber-physical systems, which promise to solve problems in the virtual world, based on the real-world data collected online, and then processed through simulation models and artificial intelligence. Although there is some research literature referring to digital twin (DT) solutions for specific problems in shipping, general lack of clarity on the level and direction of progress in this field has been observed by researchers. This paper tries to address exactly this question by collecting data using an opinion survey of managers of some maritime industry companies based in Greece – a country where a significant part of the global commercial fleet is being managed from. Drivers, enablers and impediments to the adoption of DT in shipping have been identified by an opinion survey. A first attempt to devise a generic cost-benefit framework for the adoption of DT solutions in shipping is presented as a key managerial decision-making tool for such a big investment needed for DT.