Ecoships customises ship efficiency

The technique is being used by the company to optimise the energy efficiency of the vessels under its management. According to Ecoships, it’s already resulted in up to 15% greater fuel efficiency, resulting in substantial reductions in CO2, NOx and SOx emissions.

“Our focus is firmly on safety and operating the vessels with zero harm to the environment, at all times maintaining the integrity of the hull and machinery, keeping a close hands-on approach to OPEX, and chartering the vessel in the most profitable trades,” said Captain Aykut Yilmaz, general manger. “Our DMAIC approach achieves this.”

One of the first vessels to benefit from Ecoships’ eco-smart approach is the 25,000 tonne bulk carrier, Bulk Rose. Taken under Ecoships management in January 2014, the vessel was initially consuming 840g/dwt of fuel per day. It now consumes 750g/dwt/ per day.

Ecoships says it used the DMAIC technique to identify the best technical and operational energy efficiency solutions available, such as trim optimisation and weather routing software, along de-rating engines and retrofitting hardware such as rudder find, shaft generators and waste heat recovery systems.

Bulk Rose was fitted with a shaft generator, but the company identified that a minimum 10% reduction in fuel consumption could be achieved by operational optimisation.

“After analysing the data, we decided to retrofit a shaft power torque meter and monitoring solution for better analysis of the data along with optimal voyage planning and weather routing systems. We then fed all of this data into our software for real-time analysis of fuel consumption. The result was that we were able to improve energy efficiency by 11%,” added Mr Yilmaz.

Six Sigma DMAIC, a set of techniques used to define, measure, analyse, improve and control operational performance and processes, was first developed by Motorola in 1986 and has now become central to a wide number of companies’ business strategies.