Maintenance goes digital

Regulatory responses to marine casualties, which have dictated age limits for ships, have provoked vigorous debate about the issues of age and ship maintenance. While it has been argued that a well maintained ship of age, will often be superior to a poorly maintained younger ship, there has been little formal regulation regarding ship maintenance and little in the way of systematic support for good maintenance claims ClassNK. It is for this reason that the Japanese class society claims that it has developed an advanced hull maintenance information service called PrimeShip-HULLCare.

The system has been incorporated into its PrimeShip set of software and technical services, based on the concept of total ship care. Two years ago, NK launched PrimeShip-HULL, which provides strength assessment services for hull structures at the design stage and now the class society is offering this technical service for owners and/or operators to support them during the ships operating stage, in order to fully realise the concept of total ship care.

Huge amounts of data

At each periodical survey undertaken by class a huge amount of data (in particular thickness measurement data) is collected. Thickness measurement data consisting of several thousand measurement points per survey are recorded and filed in time order (from old to new). ClassNK says that currently, if a surveyor wants to review the earlier data (in order to prepare for a survey), or if a superintendent or staff from the ship management company wants to prepare a plan for repairs at the next docking, they have to review all the current and earlier data from the existing paper files, which is a time consuming and difficult job, with obvious scope for error.

It is for these reasons that the society has been investigating how to more effectively use the data collected at each survey, in order to utilize it for more effective maintenance of the ship. ClassNK has gone down the digital route allowing the surveyor or the superintendent to access the data anytime/anywhere, greatly increasing its usefulness in preparation for surveys or maintenance schedules. As a result of recent advances in information technology, 3-D hull structure modelling has become common at the design stage of shipbuilding. It was realized therefore that if the above data (especially thickness measurement data) were reflected in the 3-D model, then much more effective ship maintenance could be achieved.

Putting all this together, the society has developed the PrimeShip-HULLCare system to organise the extensive amount of regularly collected data into a new technical service which ClassNK claims will revolutionize ships? maintenance.

24/7

The survey data in the PrimeShip-HULLCare database is accessible through the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is accessible anywhere if the Internet is available. In addition to the basic Internet service, a 3-dimensional modelling service is also available. NK will produce the 3D model at the request of the ship owner and develop the model complete with the maintenance information such as thickness measurement data, photos, repair plans, etc.

It will provide the following detailed class survey data for individual ships to the users in digital format.

l Classification Information

l Thickness measurement data

l Photographs and drawings resulting from the class survey

l Condition Assessment Scheme (CAS) reports

l Requirements of hold frame replacement for bulk carries (requirements of IACS UR S31) n