See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/276290493

Maritime Life Cycle Management during ship operation

Conference Paper · July 2009

CITATIONS READS

3 4,485

2 authors, including:

Klaus-Dieter Thoben
Universität Bremen
661 PUBLICATIONS 8,608 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Klaus-Dieter Thoben on 15 May 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management

Maritime Life Cycle Management during ship

operation

Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Thoben and Nils

Homburg
BIBA - Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik GmbH
Hochschulring 20, D-28359 Bremen, Germany
Fax: +49 421 218 5610, Phone: +49 421 218 5542
[tho, hom]@biba.uni-bremen.de

Abstract: The constantly rising demands of ship owners regarding the

efficiency and effectiveness of ship operation, especially concerning
maintenance and repair of their vessels together with upcoming rules and
regulations for ship operation foster the need of a holistic life cycle
management approach for the maritime industry. To join existing LCM
measures and to implement practical processes as well as corresponding
software tools is the goal of the MarLife research project funded by the German
ministry of economics and technology.

The MarLife consortium consisting of ship owners, a shipyard, a classification

society, software developers and research institutes believes that an integrated
life cycle management approach will lead to a significant reduction of ship life
cycle costs through an increase of transparency regarding the ship’s actual
condition. This reduction is based on a higher availability as well as a higher
operational safety of the vessel, the improved situation for planning and
performing maintenance jobs and the acceleration of repair tasks combined
with a reduction of component defects through a condition based maintenance
during the whole life cycle.

Keywords: Life Cycle Management, Maritime Industry, Product Data,

Operating Data, Guidance System, Scenarios

1 Introduction
Today ship owners are facing a keen competition in the global market of shipping and
transportation as well as tightened legal regulations in terms of environmental protection
and security that obliges them to improve cost effectiveness and to minimize the risk of
environmental impacts. These circumstances result in the demand of innovative
computer-assisted 'through life support' concepts permitting a higher degree of
transparency in the operation, servicing, maintenance, repair and ad-hoc condition
monitoring of their fleet’s vessels. A variety of LCM systems already provide ship life
cycle support for partial issues. A manageable holistic Life Cycle Management System
that offers an effective software integration of existing life cycle management measures is
still missing.

Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

 Prof. Dr. K.-D. Thoben and N. Homburg

The reduction of the ships’ operating costs is the essential condition to compete for an
outstanding market position. Hence a core aim of the life cycle management guidance
system for the maritime industry is based on a significant optimization of shipping
companies’ fleet operation. Using an over-all Life Cycle Management solution as data
and knowledge base ship owners can identify potential opportunities for improved
resource efficiency and damage prevention. Servicing cycles can be adapted and tailored
to the ship's needs. Maintenance activities can be executed cost-efficiently and more
targeted, e.g. wearing parts that fall due are punctually replaced due to a sophisticated
information base including condition data of the components to be replaced or
maintained.
Since a holistic Life Cycle Management for ships incorporates a vast spectrum of
aspects and processes a number of scenarios have been chosen within the MarLife project
in close cooperation with the project partners and conform to concrete selected needs of
the participating shipping companies, shipyards and logistics providers. The scenarios
serve as base for the specification of the organizational as well as the technical
requirements and for the design and development of the LCM System. This paper gives
an overview of the MarLife project activities.

2 Damage Statistics
Within the ship servicing context costs resulting from damage cases are extremely
difficult to calculate since they are unscheduled events with hardly predictable
consequences. Ship owners are enormously handicapped in their ship related budget
planning concerning damage issues. Experts estimated in the 90th that approximately
36%-56% of the arising ship operating expenses are spend for prevention and repair of
damages, insurances included. The future trend to increase the cargo capacities and to
build more and more large-sized container ships with the aim to reduce the servicing
costs leads at the same time to an increased pending cost risk because of the grown
dimension of a potential loss in case if a damage during ship operation occurs. So the
damage aspect comes more and more to the fore.
One of the various tasks of shipping companies is the registration and administration
of damages having occurred to vessels of their fleet while a ship owner is primarily
focused on the cost distribution resulting from a damage cases with the ultimate interest
in how to reduce the damage costs. Hence an expedient damage-reporting tool must be
able to deliver detailed damage and cost information in order to develop strategies for the
reduction or avoidance of damage costs based on these facts. This makes detailed damage
information is an integral part of a ship's life cycle data.
With regard to the above mentioned tendencies several of the MarLife project's
specified scenarios are damage scenarios, e.g. transmission damage, turbo charger
damage. In the context of these scenarios the damage reporting tool INDOCAN (Incident
Documentation and Analysis) has been developed in strong cooperation with the MarLife
project partner Beluga Shipping GmbH and with the strived goal to save 10% of the
damage caused costs via the excess of information a computer-assisted damage claim
management provides.
 Maritime Life Cycle Management during ship operation

Figure 1 Damage Claim Details

A prior task of the INDOCAN-application is the systematic registration of damage

claims that can be divided into several categories. First of all the basic damage
information and the master data, e.g. ship, date, location, route data, are set up (Fig. 1). In
a second step detailed information concerning the topics damages/occurrences, defective
elements, accidents, reasons und cost input are registered as well as manufacturer
information in order to build up a data base for future analysis concerning damage types,
damages reasons, and damage cost distribution. Damages are categorized into guaranty
claims, where the damage is still subjected to an implied or express warranty, incident
damages (ISM) where the damage is subject to a notification requirement according to
the Safety Management System Manual, stevedore damages and insured losses. A dialog
board allows a damage related free text conversation e.g. between engineers. Related
documents: manuals, damage photos and other digital supplements can be attached to a
damages case. Arising expenses as well as costs incurred can be assigned to a damage
case. A generic filter mechanism allows the performance of complex structured requests
on the registered damage claims.
INDOCAN is already in use within the productive environment of the Beluga
Shipping GmbH ship servicing. All damage claims of the years 2007 and 2008 are
administrated via this application so that a representative pool of damage data exists. A
visualization feature allows the graphical presentation of the cost distribution of a filtered
result. The statistics show that the aspired reduction of the total damage related costs
could be achieved by avoiding 1-2 of the annual damages for each ship. The systematical
registration and administration of all damage cases and the resulting costs for each ship
per year with an appropriate tool like INDOCAN will help to reduce the damage costs of
 Prof. Dr. K.-D. Thoben and N. Homburg

the fleet by reducing or avoiding damage risks through interpretations, analysis, gained
knowledge and established regulations based on the registered long-term damage data.
Also it will increase the ability to forecast and to calculate the annual damage costs of
ships, or ship classes respectively for a more reliable general budget planning and can
serve as prognosis base for further investment decisions especially regarding the decision
base of potential investors.

3 Ship Operation Data

The container ship "MV Ital Ordine" serves as reference environment for the installations
of prototypical diagnostic hard- and software as well as applications that are developed or
adapted to the MarLife project's needs in order to contribute to the acquisition and
persistent storage of ship operating data that becomes part of the ship's life cycle data
base. The installation of the MarLife results under authentic deployment and application
conditions in the environment of a container ship during its regular operation facilitates
all development tasks, the handling of incoming data as well as the specification of
maintenance regulations and the structures and techniques concerning the post-
acquisition data transfer including the communication with the LCM Guidance System.
The operating data is provided by several existing systems that have been adapted to the
needs of the project. All systems are connected to the Simatic Historian Server through
appropriate interfaces. The Server transfers this data to the LCM Guidance System where
it is added to the life cycle database. During the MarLife activities the following systems
have been installed in the reference environment of the "MV Ital Ordine":

Figure 2 Operation data acquisition via the Simatic Historian Server

 Maritime Life Cycle Management during ship operation

3.1 Siemens Simatic IT Historian Server

The Simatic Historian Server receives ship-operating data of multiple systems via
heterogeneous communication interfaces. Once the data has arrived on the server it is
persistently archived and prepared for further data transfer to the shore side. In predefined
intervals the Historian Server writes data of the next time period compressed into an
export folder. Within specified time intervals an email with one or more Siemens Simatic
IT Historian Export Zip Files and Maridis CDS Daily Zip Files attached is send to the
shore office. The Shore LCM is responsible for the distribution of the data to further
institutions or systems.
3.2 VDR Voyage Data Recorder

The Voyage Data Recorder provides detailed navigation data, e.g. position, course,
speed, heading, water depth, wind speed. The VDR is triggered once an hour and
communicates NMEA telegrams via UDP to the Historian Server. In terms of ship life
cycle management the navigation data allows not only route tracing. The VDR data may
also deliver some information about a potential relationship between the conditions of a
specific route and damage risks.
3.3 Ship Automation System - (PRAXIS)

The ship automation provides a collection of different alarms that are triggered through
defined events. The ship automation also notifies if an analogue measurement value, e.g.
temperatures, pressures exceed a given permitted range. Furthermore every hour a
snapshot is taken from all analogue values and exported via a daily export zip, which
allows a continuous analysis of the automation data. The ship automation communicates
permanently all Channels to the Real Time Data Server (Historian) via OPC Interface.
The OPC Interface uses DCOM and standard TCIP Ethernet connection.
3.4 BDMS – Bearing Monitoring System (Dr. Horn)

The Bearing Monitoring System monitors the abrasion of base, piston rod and crosshead
bearings. It transmits one sensor data set per hour via a RS232 interface directly to the
Simatic IT Historian Server.
3.5 CDS – Complex Diagnostic Systems (MARIDIS)

The CDS takes responsibility for a continuous surveillance of the engine. Deviations
from a clean engine operation, abrasions and faults shall be detected and identified in
time, long before they cause serious damages. Signals indicative of whether detected
parameters are in the permitted range or not are derived from appropriate sensors. Also
the system is able to inform about the engine's as-is state at any time. Damage prevention
and maintenance tailored to the actual needs are two central goals of the surveillance. To
achieve this operation is monitored on selected essential engine components.
The data transfer from the board-side to the shore office can be performed in different
ways. With regard to the heterogeneous possibilities, e.g. email transfer, MSLS transfer,
external media, a transfer database has been established that collects the incoming data
and assures that the data is provided in a unique format before it is processed.
 Prof. Dr. K.-D. Thoben and N. Homburg

3.6 Hull Condition Monitoring

The independent classification society and technical supervisory organization

Germanischer Lloyd advanced as MarLife project partner the Hull Condition Monitoring
approach. For that purpose the GL established with its GL HullManager an application
for planning, registration, display and interpretation of visual inspection data of a ship's
steel structure, as a further life cycle data source to provide data to an LCM system.
Through the assistance of an integrated Life Cycle Management the observation and
administration of structural changes, e.g. within a computer model, can be simplified.
Data about the hull thickness combined with other relevant structural data can be
archived in a ship's history. The actual hull structure is accessible at any time and
structure changes can be retraced and interpreted, which assures a structural reliability of
an appropriate level throughout the life cycle of a ship. This reduces the risk of structural
failures, damage to ship and cargo and environmental pollution by spill to the sea.

4 Hazardous Material Monitoring

Environmental issues take centre stage at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO)
sessions of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC). The Green Passport
concept for ships proposes that an inventory of all materials that are potentially hazardous
to the environment or human health installed on a ship have to be listed within an
according document. This document accompanies the ship through its life, from the start
of construction until the decommissioning and deconstruction. Subsequent constructional
alterations and changes in material are registered in the document so that the document
provides at any time an actual state about the types, amounts and locations of hazardous
materials installed on the ship. This leads to a growing relevance of the topic 'Inventory
of Hazardous Material'.
In the context of the MarLife project the GL worked out a concept for a Hazardous
Material Monitoring System and provided a prototype implementation for the inventory
and ship related administration of hazardous material.
The requirements are conform to the standard specified by the Maritime
Environmental Protection Committees (MEPC) of the IMO. Hazardous material
information is registered either on the base of specified hazardous materials or on the
base of pure substance lists. The material information including type and amount is
assigned to a system, component or part of the ship's construction and to a section or to a
primary part of the ship's structure.
Structures, systems and installed part possess a reference to their location so that the
hazardous material becomes localizable. The registered hazardous material information
of a ship can be analyzed according to MEPC criteria and exported as a report. The list of
the hazardous material integrated in a ship is regularly updated in the central database of
the GL after constructional changes or in the course of regular inspections. The ship
owner can request at any time the current state of hazardous material distribution on his
ship from the GL. The data export to the life cycle management guidance system is
performed through an appropriate XML-Format.
 Maritime Life Cycle Management during ship operation

5 Manual Data Recording

The LCM-Module „Manual Data Recording“ (MDR) provides the LCM-System with
operational on-board data from those measurement data sources that don't automatically
transmit data to a central archive like the Simatic Historian Server.
Many conventional systems haven't the capability to provide their sensor data in a
cached digital format or don't even offer appropriate interfaces to grip the data from the
system for further processing and analysis. Such systems display their current
measurement values on digital or analogue displays only. These measuring points are
primarily located in the engine room, the measurements consist in e.g. temperatures,
pressures, tank soundings. For the monitoring of such kind of measurements it is
necessary to record them manually. Up to now the readings have been transcribed from
the display to prepared paper form. In the case of digital archiving a second step of data
input was necessary to copy the readings from the form to a suitable application.
In order to simplify this procedure and at the same time to prepare the data for the
integration into the Life Cycle Management database the BIBA Institute of Production
and Logistics developed in the MarLife context a scanner-based handheld application that
allows reading the values directly from the display into the handheld database.
The MDR application comprises a configuration part module and a recording module.
The configuration module sets up the available ships, categories and data sheets and
allows a customization of the available measurements and accordingly the data forms
adapted to the special needs of a ship. Category and ship information is assigned to a
measurement also measuring points can be grouped. The recoding module performs the
readings. For this purpose a barcode is mounted next to each measuring point or
measuring group on the ship.
The handheld is equipped with an integrated barcode scanner. In the course of a
reading an engineer scans the barcode placed at the display of a measuring point with the
handheld. The application on the handheld contains a list of all measurements that are
available on the ship and a data form for each measuring point. After the scan it activates
the corresponding data input page for the measurement point.
The engineer transcribes the value from the display directly to the active form. The
registered value will be automatically equipped with a timestamp and the measuring point
is marked as completed.
After the recording cycle has been completed the database on the handheld has to be
synchronized with the operating database on the board computer simply by docking the
handheld into the docking station. A pre-processing module developed made-to-measure
for MDR purposes by the project partner MSLS prepares the incoming MDR data for the
LCM board system that is responsible for the daily transfer of the whole amount of LCM
relevant data to the shore office.

6 Life Cycle Management Guidance System

A Life Cycle Management system for the shipping industry is supposed to provide a
documented whole life survey. It must represent the vessel and its current condition not
only during regular operation, repairs and maintenances but also through constructional
alterations, which have to be documented in all detail while the ship's history is archived.
 Prof. Dr. K.-D. Thoben and N. Homburg

The status 'as built' has to be updated continuously during the ship’s life cycle phases to
be able to organize repairs and rebuilds smoothly.
An approach to this aim can only be successful if the Life Cycle Management's global
database integrates an extremely heterogeneous data stock resulting from different
contexts and fields that play a role in a ship's life cycle.
6.1 Product Data

Information, knowledge and documents created and archived during the conception and
design phase of a ship and ideally filed within a product data management system
represent a group of product data of the LCM. This can be system related data sheets,
specifications, manuals, calibrations, settings, manufacturer information etc. During
constructional alterations or repairs the product data has to be continuously updated while
the history must be kept.
6.2 Operating Data

The operating data covers all data collected on board of the ship during its operation.
Most of this data consist of real-time measurement data resulting from condition
monitoring systems. Modern systems provide almost boundless possibilities of collecting
and archiving data of a wide variety of natures and sources. A vessel's core systems, like
main engine, as well as auxiliary systems, like navigation systems, voyage data recorder
and other sensors provide large amounts of more or less complex and detailed
information. In addition to the automatically recorded data also the data that is manually
recorded is transferred as operational data into the global LCM database. The operation
data offers a high potential to draw conclusions about the technical condition of the ship.
Variations from a clean operation are identified early and hereby support fault diagnosis
and fault prevention. For performing the step from a planned maintenance towards a
condition based maintenance the relevance of this type of data must play a more relevant
role in the future.
6.3 Servicing Data:

Processes and services, like chartering, damage claims, repairs and the regular ship
maintenance deliver a large variety of ship servicing data via appropriate software tools.
This kind of data is currently the data group that is best computer-assisted. Planned
maintenance systems like the GL Ship Manager installed on the MarLife reference ship
'MV Ital Ordine' deliver detailed data about administrative and operational ship
management processes. In the MarLife context this data is integrated to the database of
the LCM Guidance System.
6.4 General Data
The ship's independent external sources may contribute data, e.g. meteorological data of a
defined time and region, e.g. temperature, swell, humidity, that in combination with the
above mentioned ship related data supports a better understanding of the effectiveness,
the performance or the liability to damages of a vessel in its productive context.
However, a complex and demanding challenge is to utilise the so collected
heterogeneous data and to subject it to reasonable analysis and interpretation measures in
 Maritime Life Cycle Management during ship operation

order to draw conclusions and to allow a predictions for a cost effective ship
management.
6.5 Product Data Model

For successful data integration within the Life Cycle Management Guidance system a
product data model is needed that describes a ship on an abstract level. A product data
model for a generic representation and documentation of a ship’s data within a design and
production data sub-system of the life cycle management guidance system had been
developed in a preceding research project named NET-S. The NET-S project was
engaged in the question of a reasonable local allocation of parts, components and
systems. A room-orientated view divides the ship into physical rooms as well as into
technical rooms. This technical structure can completely differ from the physical rooms
of the ship. A system-orientated view allows a representation of the ship’s systems
independently from the ship itself and components and parts can be classified along the
systems like ventilation, power supply, equipment, etc.
A grid that is valid for all persons involved defines the main dimensions. Higher-
ranking rooms, e.g. coordination areas, zones or panels are derived from this grid. By
combining the hull and the main dimensions the concept model is created as base for the
following segmentation of the rooms. By virtually cutting the body along the main
dimensions and the room zoning working areas can be created which are necessary in the
construction phase of the ship. Registered product data is accordingly defined and
assigned on all of the different view levels.
6.6 LCM Guidance System Design
The life cycle management guidance system is a combination of multiple independent
systems and applications that are not integral modules of the guidance application but
that participate in a more abstract manner by delivering their data via specified interfaces
to the global information base of the life cycle management guidance system for a further
integration and interpretation.
The life cycle management guidance system comprises a LCM-board module on
board of the vessel and a LCM-shore module on the landside. The LCM-board is
responsible for the acquisition of the data flow coming from multiple participating
systems on board as well as for the temporary storage of the incoming data. In intervals
the LCM-board has to transfer the data to the LCM-shore system via email. The LCM-
shore is responsible for the reception of the data sent by the LCM-board system as well as
from other participating systems that provide their data not through the LCM-board. An
appropriate service of the LCM-shore system continuously polls the related accounts for
incoming data. In case that messages have been received the sender is verified and the
message is automatically opened and its attachments containing the data of interest are
extracted, parsed and validated against a DTD schema if the structure of the XML
formatted content conforms to the format specified for a successful integration.
If the content has passed the validity check it is stored at a configurable location in
the local file system, ready to be further processed. Afterward the data import module of
the LCM-shore has to integrate this data based on the underlying component model into
the global life cycle data pool. Depending on the systems some data may have to be
aggregated either directly in the LCM or through the upstream systems, in order to
prevent redundant data storage.
 Prof. Dr. K.-D. Thoben and N. Homburg

Figure 3 Data analysis (damage frequency vs. damage costs) in the LCM Guidance System

However, a complex and demanding challenge is to utilize the so collected

heterogeneous data. A flexible numerical evaluation and a graphical representation of
data and analysis results have to provide an adequate access to the comprehensive and
well structured ship life cycle information. Through data mining measures further
relevant information patterns can be extracted from the data pool to be used for statistical
and logical analysis that can aid future decision-making.

7 Conclusions

The fact that the systems connected to the Life Cycle Management System stay
independent and accordingly can be applied apart from the LCM system results in a high
flexibility because all installed systems that participate in the LCM become
exchangeable. The use of a life cycle management system is expected to increase the
availability of ships and to reduce their life cycle costs.
The adoption of a life cycle management system for ship operation requires certain
investments that don't lead immediately to noticeable benefits. Hence the goals
concerning the design and development of a future-proof LCM system must be
accompanied by the sensitisation of potential clients and markets for these techniques. A
less technical but more psychological aim is to inform the target groups about the
 Maritime Life Cycle Management during ship operation

existence and the capabilities of such innovative solutions, and to develop proper
marketing, strategies.

Acknowledgment

The present results are worked out in the German joined research project MarLife funded
by the German Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWi) through the program Shipping
and Marine Technology for the 21st Century. The authors wish to acknowledge the
Ministry as well as the Project Management Organisation Jülich (PTJ) for their support.
Furthermore we hereby acknowledge our gratitude and appreciation to the MarLife
project partners: Beluga Fleet Management GmbH & Co. KG, Hartmann Schiffahrts
GmbH & Co.KG, Lloyd Werft Bremerhaven GmbH, MS Logistik Systeme GmbH
(MSLS), Siemens AG, Universität Rostock, Energie-Umwelt-Beratung e.V. - Institut
(EUB), Lürssen Logistics GmbH & Co. KG, Germanischer Lloyd AG (GL), Bremer
Institut für angewandte Strahltechnik GmbH (BIAS) for their contribution during the
development of the ideas and concepts presented in this paper.

References
1 Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik GmbH, http://www.marlife.de, `MarLife -
Maritimes LCM`, official web site of the MarLife project, edited by BIBA, Heiko Gsell
2 Chamoni, P., Gluchowski, P. (Eds.) (1999) `Analytische Informationssysteme', 2nd edition,
Springer Verlag, Berlin et al.
3 International Maritime Organization, Marine Environment Protection Committee, session
54/3 2005/12/5, "Recycling of ships - Proposal for a new legally-binding instrument on
recycling of ships"
5 Kohn, H., Gsell, H., Homburg, N. (2007) `Life Cycle Aspekte', in: Müller, D.H., Gsell, H.
(Eds.) `Netzwerk Schiffstechnik 2010 NET-S, Verlag Mainz, Aachen.
6 Müller, D.H. (2005) `Leitantrag: MarLife – Maritimes LCM, Integriertes Life Cycle
Management für die Seewirtschaft', BIBA, Bremen.
7 Saaksvuori, A., Immonen, A. (2004) `Product Lifecycle Management', Springer Verlag,
Berlin et al.
8 Stopford, M. 'Maritime Economics' , 2. Auflage, Routledge Verlag, London 1999/2000

View publication stats