Today, training methods are evolving rapidly. Industries like mining, military, aviation, construction, and, increasingly, the port industry are investing significant amounts of money in revitalizing their training programs.
It’s becoming clear that quality training provides benefits across most organizations. NMSA (The National Maritime Safety Association) writes in its blog:
“A well-implemented safety training program not only ensures the well-being of workers but also proves to be economically beneficial. It’s estimated that for every dollar invested in these programs, there’s a return of about $4, demonstrating both time and cost savings while boosting productivity.
Effective training (read those first two words again) is a critical aspect of safety for your workforce. Training programs should be comprehensive covering all aspects of safety, including handling of cargo, operating machinery, and emergency response procedures.
In 2024, enhance your training programs by ensuring they are up to date with the latest best practices, protocols, and procedures.”
We’re seeing this shift in attitudes towards training happening throughout the market. Let’s explore why people are increasingly turning to training simulators to solve their training problems.
The world is changing at a fast rate these days. The port industry is no exception. When it comes to training, the preferences of today’s trainees have evolved significantly compared to two decades ago.
Conventional training, like watching DVDs or someone give a PowerPoint presentation at the front of the classroom, doesn’t resonate anymore. More often than not, the younger generation—the people who are increasingly being trained in the port industry—are bored by such things. A disengaged trainee will not produce a qualified operator. While some level of disinterest might always be present when it comes to classroom training, it’s important to meet modern trainees halfway and recognize that the multi-faceted approach to learning they’ve been subjected to all their lives (think online quizzes, games, videos) is a language they better understand.
Enter training simulators, a tactile and immersive way of learning. Trainees engage in learning more when using a simulator than they would by watching a video. They are learning through muscle memory the operations for future tasks. Not only do they experience operations in a tactile way, but trainees better retain that knowledge due to the immersive nature of the simulator. All of this learning is possible in a perfectly safe environment without burning a drop of fuel.
The aviation industry has been using simulation technology for decades now, with great success. Flight simulator hours contribute to the official Airline Transport Pilot Certificate, allowing pilots to train for worst-case scenarios, extreme weather, and more, without the limitations of fuel or aircraft maintenance. This training is available year-round, and allows pilots to train for dangerous edge cases (like having to land a plane with only one engine!) that they wouldn’t want to experience for the first time in real operation. It’s no wonder that the airline industry is so safe.
If this technology is trusted by one of our safest industries, it stands to reason that it would also benefit other industries facing fatalities and safety challenges. The same underlying logic that the airline industries use to justify simulator use also applies to industries like construction and ports. On a simulator, you can train 24/7 in a safe environment to not only learn the basics, but also train for edge-case scenarios and on a variety of control schemes and OEMs. You can even connect with another simulator and practice teamwork skills with other trainees in the same virtual environment. This makes sense whether you’re talking about planes, excavators, or ship-to-shore cranes!
Overall, there are five big reasons the aviation industry trusts simulation technology:
- They are able to train in a safe environment.
- They provide confidence and controls familiarization.
- The real equipment can be used to make money rather than for training.
- They’re able to train for situations they would otherwise want to avoid in real life.
- They are able to improve teamwork skills.
While simulation in general has been a proven, fantastic way to teach the trainees of the future, there is still some nuance in the quality of simulation training available in the market. It’s critical that trainees learn in a simulated environment that closely mimics the real world. If not, the trainee risks developing bad habits in the simulator that will eventually need to be corrected on the real machine. This re-learning of habits takes far more time and energy than if they had just learned the correct habits in the first place. This concept is known as “negative training.”
Imagine a trainee learning how to pick up containers using an STS, where the spreader twistlocks magnetize to each corner, and help the trainee pick up the container. Imagine that same trainee’s shock when they get into a real STS and realize that the real operation is much, much harder without those assists. This is the unfortunate reality for some, who have trained on simulators that don’t emphasize realism and instead focus on immediate gratification and video-game-like reward systems.
The concept of negative training can cost organizations loss in time and resources, due to lost time in the training process. Serious negative training can even negate a trainee’s simulator training completely, if they have to spend double the time on real equipment to unlearn what they did on an unrealistic simulator.
For these reasons, it’s paramount that a training simulator comes as close as possible to recreating real equipment behaviors and properties. It’s why we have dozens of employees with mechanical engineering backgrounds, who are focused on delivering the most realistic, industry-vetted simulation training products out there.
By having a robust and dependable physics technology that underlines the simulator, you get robust and dependable data from the simulator. Any software can spit out numbers, but if those numbers have no basis in reality, the metrics that are outputted have almost no more significance than if they were coming out of a random number generator.
Our simulators output lots of different data to the user that generally falls under these four broad categories:
- Safety Performance
- Efficiency
- Curriculum Progression
- Equipment Usage
Intellia Instructor, our training management system for instructors, allows users to do a deep dive into trainee performance. Instructors can monitor multiple simulators remotely and receive data from each simulator in real time. Instructors can see where trainees are struggling and where they can improve. Instructors can even see how many moves per hour an operator is at, and if they are improving.
Instructors can also inject faults into the scenario and see if the trainee is able to safely handle a broken twistlock, or snapped cable. Particularly keen instructors are able to process this data in whatever way they like, using our data export feature, from Intellia Instructor. For us, it was important to make it as easy as possible for our users to digest and take advantage of the tremendous amounts of data the simulator produces, while also offering the option to dive deep for the organizations that need it.
As the port industry continues to evolve, the need for advanced training solutions is becoming increasingly apparent. Simulation technology offers a powerful tool for addressing the challenges of modern operator training, providing a safe, cost-effective, and highly realistic environment in which operators can hone their skills. Many industries, not just the port industry, are welcoming training simulation with open arms to re-energize their operator training programs and attract top talent to the industry. By embracing simulation technology and leveraging the data it produces, organizations can not only improve the quality of their training programs but also ensure that their operations are running efficiently.
Want to learn more about how simulation training benefits ports? Find out how the Port of Halifax was able to effectively halve its training times with the help of simulation technology.
Find out how they halved their training time with the help of simulation technology.
