Investing in digitalisation can help owners to reduce costs, optimise operations and raise uptime of their assets, attendees of Riviera Maritime Media’s Annual Offshore Support Journal Conference were told
P&O Maritime Logistics head of IT Kris Vedat explained how the company’s digitalisation and internet of things (IoT) investment has helped to identify potential failures, cut costs and improve operational efficiency.
“IoT technology can help reduce downtime,” said Mr Vedat. “We use this to identify issues before a failure occurs.”
P&O partnered with Baker Hughes to develop Vitalyx for real-time monitoring and sampling lubricant oil to identify issues. This was used on DMS Courageous to identify water incursion in lube oil. P&O was able to change the oil and cooler and deploy absorbers to remove the water at a cost of US$70,000 instead of millions of dollars in potential repairs if that water resulted in mechanical failures.
P&O has also used digitalisation to optimise offshore logistics for energy companies.
“We developed a logistics platform with artificial intelligence and machine learning for distribution of cargo, so one vessel can serve multiple rigs and operators,” said Mr Vedat. “We can optimise deck space, reduce costs of rental equipment, optimise berthing and improve fuel efficiency. We are unlocking value for clients and us.”
P&O provides this integrated logistics platform at three locations for one client and two for a second energy company.
“We have reduced fuel by 40%,” said Mr Vedat. “This is the way forward for our industry as we can offer our logistics-as-a-service solution.”
Also in this session, OneWeb head of maritime and energy Carole Plessy introduced the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation for offshore communications.
She said 358 LEO satellites are in orbit, of an expected 650, enabling OneWeb to begin regional services.
OneWeb has US$2.7Bn of funding, priority to using 6 GHz frequency of radiocommunications and will offer latency of just 70 milliseconds (ms). This is compared with 180 ms for medium Earth orbit satellites such as SES O3b and 600 ms of geostationary orbit satellites used for VSAT.
Inmarsat vice president for offshore energy and fishing Eric Griffin outlined the benefits of Fleet Data, Connect and Edge for vessel owners.
He used case studies from application providers using Fleet Xpress to reduce vessel costs and emissions. He said owners using Yxney Maritime had cut 3-7% in fuel and emissions by using this application with Ka-band satellite communications.
One owner reduced costs using Brightree’s application for remote engine monitoring, and Lloyd’s Register lowered its survey costs using remote connectivity.
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