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analytics to manage fuel use across the fleet. “Owners can look at the fuel consumption by vessel and compare by vessel type, such as just looking at all platform supply vessels (PSVs),” he said. “They can look at fuel consumption compared to the vessel’s activities, such as analysing consumption during steaming or dynamic positioning. They can calculate the average value during operations and compare vessels in the fleet to see what fuel is used by PSVs versus AHTS anchor handlers.” They can also see the different fuel consumption values per vessel and identify which ones are spending more on fuel than others. The quality and procedures module of the software includes functions for quality assurance procedures, audits and inspection reports, vessel vettings and master reviews. The safety and security section incorporates incident reporting, safety observations, risk assessment, safe job analysis, permit to work, emergency logs and safe job analysis. Vessel operators can also use system monitoring and data analytics to improve operations, reduce fuel costs and implement condition-based maintenance strategies. Caterpillar Marine has developed a service that advises owners on how to manage maintenance on engines and auxiliary systems. According to offshore segment manager Bart Long, the Caterpillar Marine Asset Intelligence and Analytics can help owners increase the overall performance of a vessel’s engine set. In a presentation at the Annual Offshore Support Journal Conference, Awards & Exhibition in London, he
said automated analytics can transform raw data into actionable information that owners can use for condition-based maintenance and operations. It involves the remote monitoring of these systems and feeding the data back to a shore-based centre for analysis. Caterpillar qualifies the data and runs automated algorithms to produce actionable information, which can include prognosis of issues and predictions of equipment failure. Mr Long said this would enable owners to eliminate defects, improve system performance and optimise energy consumption. It includes problem diagnostics, predictive analysis and efficiency reports, as well as vessel operator dashboards for displaying the information. The asset intelligence approach to predictive analytics means going from a position of having too much data to a stage where owners have just the right amount of data for their operations, Mr Long said. He added that the benefits include predicting and avoiding failures, as well as assisting crew with problems with remote expert troubleshooting. “Owners can make the shift to condition-based maintenance to avoid unnecessary maintenance and extend overhaul intervals,” said Mr Long. They can also increase fuel efficiency of their vessels by managing engine loads during different operations, such as steaming or dynamic positioning, to reduce the total fuel consumption from their key assets, he added. Part of the analysis could include Caterpillar’s Multi-Engine Optimizer
(MEO), which was designed to reduce fuel consumption and emissions and increase maintenance intervals. It is intelligence for power management systems, said Mr Long. It means owners run only the engines needed for the operations and the most efficient load point. The MEO will integrate with existing systems to reduce fuel consumption by between 10 and 15 per cent and nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 50 per cent. Meanwhile, Interschalt Maritime Systems has developed a maritime data engine (MDE) for the collection, normalisation and provision of data from vessel systems. It uses a standardised and platform-independent industrial communication protocol, which means it is accessible to equipment supplied by other companies. Information from Interschalt’s voyage data recorders (VDRs) is fed to the data engine for ship operators and managers to analyse in real time. This will enable managers to identify performance trends on various vessel systems. When installed onboard, the MDE generates a normalised, process image of the ship systems. If all vessels in a fleet are networked via wide area connections, the MDE can provide the normalised process images of the fleet. The MDE enables third-party systems, such as fire alarm systems, to use the data for different applications. “The MDE fulfils the requirement necessary to tap into the data pool of ships as a part of business intelligence,” Interschalt chief executive Robert Gärtner explained. MDE uses the open platform communications (OPC) unified architecture (UA) protocol for industry machine-to-machine connectivity. “By using the OPC-UA standard, the MDE has the potential to establish itself as a central interface for onboard system integration and is the ideal supplement to our VDR systems,” said Mr Gärtner. OSJ
LEFT: Loo Choo Leong talks with Kurt Vilhelmsen about the benefits of using Unisea software
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Offshore Support Journal | April 2016