Wärtsilä delivers fast remote service

Operational support is delivered via virtual service engineers. Smart Support is designed to maintain all Wärtsilä Voyage equipment, including ship handling solutions, such as ECDIS and charts, simulation & training systems, and ship traffic control solutions.

The service has been extensively tested in a pilot programme with Danish shipping company J. Lauritzen AS. “Firstly, the crew is aware that 95% of all errors can be rectified remotely, and they don’t need to arrange for a service engineer in the next port to solve the issue,” commented Hans Elker Hansen, marine QA, vetting & nautical manager at Lauritzen.

“This means that we have the equipment up and running at all times. Secondly, the use of e-mails to solve a technical or user-related problem is almost entirely eliminated, which avoids excessive communication.”

The Wärtsilä Smart Support Centre remotely manages the health of systems, proactively warns if anything is deteriorating, makes software updates, and assists system users in all operative questions with fast response times.

With a team of engineers and subject matter experts who are available round-the-clock, Smart Support provides access to the company’s knowledge base and responds to the most frequently asked questions.