Internet of Things and business processes redesign in seaports: The case of Hamburg

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the extant literature about the exploitation of Internet of Things (IoT) in seaports by illustrating in detail how such IT infrastructures can impact on the redesign of their business processes. Thus, the research question of the study is: how do IoT technologies redesign the business processes of seaports?

The paper reports the illustrative case study of the German Port of Hamburg, one of the main European seaports, which widely adopted technologies based on IoT over the last few years.

The results show the adoption of IoT technologies widely redesigns and improves the performance of all the main business process of the port analyzed, in particular those processes related to technology and information of the organization. The IoT-driven business process redesign (BPR) must be planned strategically by the port management and implies the involvement of all the port stakeholders and, if necessary, the hiring external professional partners.

Despite some authors report generically which are the ports operational domains more affected by IoT, there is a lack of studies about the specific implications of the adoption of such technologies on the BPR of seaports. The paper fills in this gap.