Transparency and Efficiency in Ship Management Focus for Maersk

Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company, has chosen to implement DNV GL’s maritime software solution ShipManager on its owned fleet of 275 vessels. By April 2017, nine legacy applications will be replaced by one and 8000 Maersk employees will be using ShipManager around the world.  At a DNV GL - Software seminar held in Hamburg recently, Sebastiaan Van den Wijngaert, Senior Project Manager at Maersk Line IT, spoke to Forum Magazine about why Maersk Line chose DNV GL’s software and what challenges the company has faced during the implementation phase.

Choosing ShipManager

Recent and upcoming regulations were a key motivation for choosing a new Ship Management system, Van den Wijngaert explains. “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.” Maersk Line will be using five integrated ShipManager modules: Technical, Procurement, Project (dry docking), QHSE, and Analyzer.

An additional factor was that ShipManager packaged all necessary processes into one system. “Our seafarers really appreciate this, as it simplifies their work and it makes on-boarding people easier,” he says. Previously Maersk Line used nine applications to manage core ship management processes. “Our old, legacy applications were not fully integrated, required a high degree of manual data transfer between applications, and there were divergences between what ship crews and on-shore staff would see on their screens. That needed to change,” he adds.

The Analyzer Module will improve reporting on factors such as compliance, safety, maintenance, and spend per vessel. “The module uses data collected by the ship owner, such as information about technical maintenance, procurement, and QHSE (quality, health, safety, and environment) and enables the customer to benchmark a vessel against others in their fleet, in order to make more informed business decisions,” explains Rune Lyngaas, Head of Product Management Maritime Software at DNV GL - Software. “The Analyzer holds great potential for our business, as it will give our fleet managers a level of transparency they never had before,” Van den Wijngaert adds.

A solid roll-out process

The roll-out for the project is ambitious. After starting with an implementation quota of ten vessels per month, Maersk Line decided to speed up the process even further as the designed roll-out process proved to be working very well. 42 ships have been completed so far, 15 of those in October alone. With a target of equipping 65 vessels by the end of the year, the members of the Maersk Line roll-out team really have their work cut out for them. The Maersk Line project team includes 30 specially trained seafarers who travel from ship to ship, staying for 3 weeks to install the software correctly, check for synchronization issues and train the vessel crew in using ShipManager. To ensure it all runs smoothly, Maersk Line is also carrying out quality assurance checks throughout the implementation phase.