How smart predictive maintenance advances an eco-efficient future

Because international shipping accounts for 2-3% of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, shipowners are under increasing pressure to improve their environmental profiles in line with the goal of the Paris Agreement.

Shipowners will have to demonstrate progress on their paths to decarbonisation in their ESG reports.

World-leading aftermarket turbocharger company Tru-Marine is committed to ESG and understands the shipowner’s challenges well.

Headquartered in one of the world’s largest transhipment hubs and a major bunkering port, Singapore-based Tru-Marine has 45 years of experience in turbocharger maintenance, repairing, overhauling and supplying spare parts. This year, it leveraged that extensive knowledge to launch a new intelligent predictive maintenance service platform to help shipowners reduce turbocharger maintenance costs, avoid emergency repairs and slash vessel downtime. Increased digitalisation is seen as an essential tool to reduce emissions, increase efficiency and improve vessel availability.

Called TruCare, the new turbocharger anomaly detection and predictive maintenance-as-a-service (PdMaaS) digital solution is designed for use with all marine turbochargers. 

“TruCare is a disruptive digitalisation approach in managing asset maintenance on board vessels in a completely different way,” said Tru-Marine group chief executive James Loke. “More importantly, it is our response to the urgency of decarbonisation imposed by world maritime and the Singapore Government’s raised climate ambition to meet net zero by or around 2050. Tru-Marine is committed to our ESG goal of carbon reduction through component lifecycle extension, remanufacturing and a circular economy. In addition to benefiting from the value add, TruCare is an enabler for all vessel operators to join us in contributing towards the circular model for a more eco-efficient future,” added Mr Loke.

Using an intelligent centralised predictive monitoring system, TruCare aims to transform the technical management of oceangoing vessels. It can be fitted onto existing engines, does not require modifications and is provided as a platform linking all end users and service providers.

TruCare wants to make emergency repair a thing of the past. As a PdMaaS solution, TruCare will use IoT technologies, edge and cloud-computing, machine learning and digital twins for predictive maintenance of turbochargers, providing improved equipment performance monitoring and technical consultancy.

Key operational parameters will be transmitted from ship-to-shore to a command centre for real-time data analysis, using machine learning algorithms and failure models to monitor turbocharger performance, predict failures and recommend maintenance windows.

By establishing correlations between turbocharger performance and engine parameters, TruCare’s predictive ability in detecting anomalies and complex indications for breakdowns helps pre-empt potential operating issues before there is a crisis, explained Tru-Marine.

Using actual shipboard operating conditions, TruCare detects the possibility of a fault and recommends service. Furthermore, TruCare differentiates on its capability in predicting the optimal time for refurbishment/overhaul of components, extending the fixed maintenance schedules – moving away from traditional rigid service intervals.

This addresses the commonly occurring, premature turbocharger failures and associated high costs of emergency repairs, vessel downtime, off-hires and delayed port calls.

TruCare is designed to improve the total cost of ownership and asset management, by reducing maintenance costs, downtime and extending asset lifetime. Targeting also the challenges of under- and over-maintenance, the digital solution puts control back into the hands of shipowners, managers and operators, to offer peace of mind through a controlled overview of their monitored assets and crew performance.

IoT digital tools like TruCare will become increasingly important to shipowners as they advance their decarbonisation goals and improve their ESG standing.