SOFTWARE
Digital Ship August 2008 page 18
"If you have a question, how do I fix thepump, it takes 1 minute instead of 10 minsto find the answer," said Kay-MichaelGoertz, head of logistic procedures and ITat HDW - ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.
Managing spares
If equipment information is supplied inShipdex format, shipowners can also loadthe data about their spare parts automati-cally into their purchasing systems - andwith better data in their purchasing sys-tem, they can make sure they have theright spare parts onboard and alwaysorder the right spare parts.Even if only a small percentage of yourspare parts are wrong, it is very expensiveand potentially dangerous.There are many stories in the industryof shipowners forced to airlift criticalparts, or charts, to a vessel by helicopter,because they will be detained if they don'thave them.By having a better database of yourspare parts, it is possible to do many newthings. For example, you might determinethat a supplier is trying to get you to buy aspare part, which is only needed for oneprocedure, and that procedure can only bedone by a dry dock - so there's no point inbuying it.
Better manuals
A big hope for Shipdex is that it willencourage suppliers to improve the quali-ty of information in their manuals.There is no guarantee that a manualprovided electronically will be of any bet-ter quality than a manual supplied onpaper, but it should be easier to assess thequality of an electronic manual, and so putpressure on the supplier to improve it.For example, a common problem withtoday's manuals is that they have a refer-ence to another manual, but the page inthe other manual doesn't exist any more orcan't be found. If the links are electronic,the computer can alert you if there are anybroken links, so they will all need to bekept up to date."Very often handbooks are absolutelyterrible quality. The information is rub-bish. It's very difficult to find the informa-tion you want," said Giampiero Soncini,CEO of SpecTec."We got one supplier to agree with us - itis impossible for crew to read what we havedelivered. Have you ever seen Japanesehandbooks translated into English?Sometimes I'd rather read Japanese."The reason manufacturers often do notprovide particularly good manuals todayis because they lack incentive - peopletend to buy equipment on the basis of itsprice and fitness for purpose, not the qual-ity of the manuals."97 per cent of negotiation (with themanufacturer) is about 'are we gettingwhat we want for the price we want'," saidDimitris Lyras of Lyras Shipping. "I don'tthink manufacturers believe they get acompetitive advantage from the informa-tion in their manuals."
Benchmarking anddashboards
Having better data should make it mucheasier to compare one vessel with another,so companies will have a better idea ofhow well they are doing."We have one customer with 23 vessels,each database is built by different people,"said SpecTec's Mr Soncini. "So they arecompletely different databases. It's impos-sible to compare one ship with another."Bob Kessler of ABS Nautical Systemsrecalled a Dilbert cartoon, which showed amanager asking for executive summaryinformation, or 'dashboards', but not car-ing whether the underlying data is anygood or not, a scenario many in the mar-itime industry will be familiar with."Everybody wants 'dashboards'," hesaid. "But if you have bad data, you won'tget any useful dashboards."
Managing the servicebulletins
If all technical information is supplied inShipdex format, it should make it easierfor suppliers to update their manuals forequipment in service.Currently, the only way for suppliers toupdate their manuals is to send out apaper 'service bulletin' - but this isn't easy,if you don't know exactly which ships areusing the equipment, there is no easy wayto post the bulletin to the ship, and youhave no way of knowing if it has beenreceived and is being read as needed.It would be so much easier if the updatecould be sent to the ship electronically,and automatically incorporated into theshipboard electronic manuals, with themaintenance, spares and purchasing sys-tems updated as required; and Shipdexmakes this possible.This communication between supplierand vessel could also be two ways - withthe vessel providing the supplier with use-ful information about how well the equip-ment is performing (both provided manu-ally and electronically).Neil Firth, chief technology officer withelectronic purchasing company ShipServ,suggested that his company could poten-tially assist here, by carrying manualupdates through its TradeNet hub, whichmany vessels and equipment suppliers arealready connected to.The benefit is the reduced amount of ITintegration which needs to be made. Everytime a vessel connects to a supplier, thereis IT work in doing the integration; and ifeach vessel is connected to multiple equip-ment suppliers, and each supplier is con-nected to multiple vessels, that's a lot ofintegration work. But if each vessel andsupplier connects once to TradeNet, nofurther integrations are required.Some suppliers may work on the basisthat they can send out updates by e-mail,but Mr Firth pointed out that there aremany shortcomings to this, in particularnot knowing if the message has beenreceived."It's not a safe mechanism for delivery,"he said. "With our process, you have anaudit process."
Building the databasefaster
Perhaps the benefit of Shipdex with thebiggest immediate impact on theshipowner's bottom line is the reducedcost of putting together a good mainte-nance database on a new vessel.Or, since only a small proportion ofshipowners are making this investment, itmeans that the vessel can actually have areally good maintenance system for thefirst time.Creating a good maintenance manage-ment system using current methods isvery expensive.Grimaldi Naples currently spends 2 to 4months manually inputting data for eachnew vessel it has, at a cost of around $20,000.Other shipowners work with contrac-tors to create a computerised maintenancemanagement system from the informationin the manuals.Building a maintenance system fromthe paper manuals involves "a lot of datapopulation steps; none of them very sim-ple," said Dimitris Lyras, special advisorto Ulysses Systems, a company which pro-vides this service. "There's a million waysto make errors.""Someone has to understand the manu-als - things aren't listed in the same way,"he said. "People have to look at the manu-als, mark them up, and have someoneextract the data. It's a bit like translating.We have to abstract people's translationsinto a common format.""It takes 6-8 weeks to do. We get thecrates of manuals, then they have to beopened, indexed, studied, copied,repacked and sent back."Don't expect much help from the ship-yards, who put the manuals together."Shipyards don't find this stage importantor particularly interesting," he said.Giampiero Soncini, CEO of SpecTec,estimated that it takes 90 days (12 weeks)to build a maintenance system for a newtanker or bulk carrier from the paper doc-uments; but if the data was available elec-tronically, it would reduce to 2 days."If you do it in the Philippines, it maycost $10,000, but you have to pay another$10,000 to send the manuals there and getthem back, and you only have 1 set ofmanuals," he said.SpecTec currently earns $4m every yearfrom its manual data entry services, butMr Soncini would be happy if the compa-ny didn't have to do it anymore. "Wecould turn the 40-50 people who do it intoconsultants and have them doing workonboard instead," he said.There are no real short cuts to puttingtogether a maintenance management sys-tem, said Mr Soncini.One unfortunate habit is for shipown-ers to buy software with a so called 'skele-ton database' already on it - which refersto general equipment parts, not somethingspecific to the vessel.They then discover that having a gener-ic maintenance system is worse than use-less, in that it tells seafarers to do taskswhich don't need doing, and doesn't tellthem what actually needs doing.
It takes 1 minute instead of 10 minutesto find the answer to a critical question -Kay-Michael Goertz, head of logistic procedures and IT at HDW -ThyssenKrupp Marine SystemsEveryone wants management 'dashboards'but they are only any use if the underlyingdata is of good quality, pointed out BobKessler, head of Europe, Middle East and Africa with ABS Nautical SystemsShipServ's technology could be used for updates and service bulletins- Neil Firth, ShipServThe time to build a maintenancedatabase for a new vessel wouldreduce from 90 days to 2 days- Giampiero Soncini, CEO of SpecTec
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