One of the global leaders in ship towage services is undergoing a major change in the way it considers vessel maintenance, by investing in new software and a database to optimise tugboat technical management and reduce maintenance costs.
It is adding two modules of Logimatic’s Sertica software and constructing a database to harmonise maintenance, lower operating expenditure and improve equipment reliability.
This will be installed on the global fleet of more than 430 vessels employed to support ship escorting, towage, berthing and provide harbour assistance.
Svitzer chief technical officer Evangelos Fragkoulis said upgrading the maintenance software follows a “change in mindset” for fleet-wide maintenance. “We no longer talk of sister vessels but rather sister equipment,” he said.
Svitzer is adding the Jobtext Management module of Sertica to establish a central database for its tugs. It is also setting up a spare parts management system in Sertica to reduce operating expenditure. Mr Fragkoulis said it was “crucial for us to able to control the content of maintenance jobs easily and centrally.”
“It is crucial for us to able to control the content of maintenance jobs easily and centrally”
He said this would standardise maintenance across its divisions and “improve the performance and user experience of the crew”.
Updating Sertica will ensure seafarers “have the right data and manuals at hand” and all vessels in the fleet have a standardised planned maintenance system.
Mr Fragkoulis said this database and centralised system would enable seafarer experience to be shared across the fleet.
“In case a chief engineer comes up with a very clever change request to our maintenance jobs, then we make sure we replicate this new maintenance standard to all our sister equipment across the Svitzer fleet with the push of a button,” he said.
Svitzer is rebuilding the whole component structure of the company-wide planned maintenance system to harmonise this across the fleet. This should help to prevent any reoccurrences of equipment defects as experiences and information are centralised.
To achieve this, Svitzer and Logimatic created a technical management system using Sertica’s systems management and Jobtext modules. The main equipment is added to the spare parts management system Svitzer staff use to negotiate with relevant suppliers in procurement discussions.
Mr Fragkoulis said Svitzer, which has more than 4,000 employees wordwide, can “propose custom changes to Sertica and have these implemented accordingly.”
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