ABS has published the Guide for Smart Functions for Marine Vessels and Offshore Units to help marine and offshore owners and operators capitalize on their operational data.
The guide is the marine and offshore industries’ first set of notations to help owners and operators qualify and use smart functions. Through the analytics they provide, smart functions can manage asset health and performance, providing a mechanism for sustainability and improved uptime. Smart functions also can lead to increasingly condition-based approaches to maintenance strategies and class surveys.
The approach laid out in the guide applies a risk-informed set of easy-to-apply prescriptive requirements for engineering review and survey of the smart-technology applications.
“Smart technology will be a key factor for industry sustainability in the coming years. Future adoption of smart technology and its ability to enable better decision-making and continuous improvement will coincide with quickly changing environmental requirements,” said Christopher J. Wiernicki, chairman, president, and chief executive officer for ABS. “Smart technologies and how a vessel’s data is utilized to optimize performance can drive improved efficiency today and will be critical to meeting the reduced-emissions requirements being developed by the IMO [International Maritime Organization].”
The use of operational data and analytics, such as machine learning, enable better decisions related to vessel performance and can provide early indicators that help avoid failures and downtime. The implementation of smart functions helps crew and shore-based personnel make decisions to speed corrective actions.
The guide covers functions related to performance, health, and crew support. It also introduces three new notations that support the recognition of a vessel’s data infrastructure as well as health-monitoring functions, which can be used to support survey activity.
To support a streamlined integration of vendor products and services related to smart functionality, the guide also lays out a product-design assessment scheme coupled with a service-provider approval process to support equipment manufacturers, shipyards, owners, and third-party software providers as they develop products and services for smart functionality for use onboard ABS-classed vessels.
“This guide takes a practical approach to helping industry incorporate smart functionality,” said John McDonald, vice president for global business development at ABS. “Fundamentally, this guide enables industry to apply smart-function notations based on operational needs, allowing owners to choose the machinery or structural areas that are most critical for health monitoring.”