Maersk Upgrades Ship Management Systems

Published Dec 8, 2015 2:54 PM by The Maritime Executive

Maersk has chosen to implement DNV’s ship management software on its owned fleet of 275 vessels. By April 2017, 8,000 company employees will be using the software around the world.

The software will allow crew to maintain a single database of shipboard operations, including purchasing, repairs, consumables, and many other variables affecting costs and efficiency. Shoreside staff will be able to analyze ship and fleet performance and to view the same data available shipboard.

Regulations motivated the selection of a new ship management system, said Sebastiaan Van den Wijngaert, Senior Project Manager at Maersk Line IT. “We chose an off-the-shelf solution because we wanted to move away from too much customization and ensure that our application lives up to the industry standard and benefits from regular updates.” Previously Maersk used nine applications for ship management processes.

After starting with an implementation quota of ten vessels per month, Maersk decided to speed up the process. The 30 members of the company's roll-out team have a target of equipping 65 vessels by the end of the year.

The greatest challenge is managing the migration. The data volumes are immense: each piece of equipment or paint job needs to be considered to get a full picture of a vessel, amounting to some 100,000 data elements per ship. “Previously, this data was stored in an older application, where the data structure was not kept fixed over time, resulting in a complex and inconsistent structure. Thankfully, we have found a way of unravelling it,” said Van den Wijngaert.

What's more, “no two ships in the Maersk Line owned fleet are exactly the same. Even sister ships only have about 90 per cent of elements in common, due to replaced equipment of a different type or changes to the vessel design,” Van den Wijngaert explains.

DNV's ShipManager is part of a burgeoning field of fleet management software offerings. Alternatives include products from BOSS, Kongsberg, NorComms, ShipNet, Helm, Marine Software, and THINKmarine, among others.