Getting rid of paper manuals

Hamburg SAS Radisson - May 14 2008

In association with Shipdex -
The ultimate Ship Data Exchange Protocol Shipdex

If you think it is time shipping companies could have all the information in their shipboard equipment manuals electronically, rather than on paper, then you might like to consider attending our conference in Hamburg on May 14th, in association with ShipDex, about this very subject.

If the manuals were electronic rather than on paper, it would be easier to find what you were looking for quickly, with associated safety benefits (ever tried looking for the right page in a manual during an emergency).

It would be easier to manage the information; easier to load the information into your maintenance and purchasing systems; easier to keep the systems updated; easier to gather the manuals together when the vessel is sold or changes management; and easier to switch to using different software.

Fortunately, two major shipping companies, Intership Navigation and Grimaldi Naples, together with software company SpecTec, and suppliers Alfa Laval, MAN Diesel, MacGREGOR, and Yanmar Company, have already developed a standard way that manuals can be created and used electronically, and it is freely available for any company to use.

The next stage is for other shipping companies and suppliers to use it.

If you agree that it would be better if manuals were supplied electronically, whether you work for a shipping company or equipment supplier, we encourage you to attend our conference, so you can learn more about ShipDex and decide if you want to use it.

Delegates registered so far include: A.P. Moller - Maersk, Documentation Specialist / Manager; Atlantic Container Line, VP Marine & Terminal Operations; Becker Marine Systems Communication, Director Global Sales, Product Manager; Callenberg Fläkt Marine AB, Manager Parts & Training; Carnival UK, Senior Superintendent Maintenance & Risk, Systems Manager; d'Amico, Chief Information Officer, Application Developer & DBA; Jan De Nul n.v., AMOS Manager trainee; Rosemount Tank Radar AB, Technical Information Engineer; Transatlantic Fleet Service AB, Purchase Manager, technical manager; Vroon BV, Group QHSE Manager

Chairman: Till Braun, head of department - sales projects, Germanischer Lloyd

9.10 - Welcome, introduction and explanation about Shipdex. Giampiero Soncini, managing director, SpecTec why Shipdex has come to life - the full scope of Shipdex


9.30 Grimaldi Group's experience with Shipdex - what it hopes to achieve, who covered the costs. Dr Ing Giancarlo Coletta, purchasing director, Grimaldi Group Naples


10.00 Marco Vatteroni, ILS manager, SpecTec . Outline of Shipdex and what it does.



10.30 Pawel Bury, IT manager, Intership Navigation. What Intership expects from Shipdex and why it was set up




11.00 BREAK
Coffee break sponsor

CiBS

11.30 Ship lifecycle management, -the key to success. Björn Stenwall, Director, Sales, Marketing & Major Project Unit, MacGREGOR assisted by Katarina Munter, Manager, Technical Documentations Services, Competence Centre RORO, MacGREGOR, and Eva-Lisa Martinsson, Manager, Technical Documentations Services, Competence Centre Cranes, MacGREGOR

12.00 Experiences with electronic manuals at Thyssen Krupp. Kay-Michael Goertz, IT Analyst (knowledge) and head of logistic procedures and IT" at HDW - ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.



12.30 Panel discussion - what benefits can Shipdex bring to the industry? What are the hurdles to getting it adopted? With Mats Ottosson, strategic project manager, parts and service equipment, Alfa Laval

1.00 Lunch

2.15 Linking electronic manuals to an electronic purchasing system - what is involved, what are the benefits. Neil Firth, chief technology officer, ShipServ

2.45 Implementing ShipDex. Marco Vatteroni, ILS data manager, with Werner M. Schadelbauer, managing director of HiCo

How to implement efficient tooling of S1000D(tm) based solutions for Interactive Electronic Technical Documentation (IETD).
What is the meaning regarding Shipdex in context of S1000D(tm) solutions
Support of CMMS like AMOS Business Suite on Shipdex (TM) Data Sets

3.15 Keeping your data clean - how should shipping companies make sure they have the best possible data. Bob Kessler, head EMEA, ABS Nautical Systems .

3.45 BREAK

4.15 Making sure an electronic data system is usable - so seafarers use it and can get the most out of it. Dimitris Lyras, advisor to the board, Ulysses Systems.



4.45 Panel discussion - making Shipdex work. What needs to be done to ensure the industry gets the most value out of this initiative and it has widespread adoption?

5pm - Evening cocktails at "Top of Town Bar," SAS Radisson

ATTEND THE CONFERENCE to learn how your company can get the benefits of having shipboard manuals as electronic data, whether you are a shipowner or supplier, and learn more about the Shipdex initiative and decide if you want to join.

Attendance fee for the one day conference is just GBP 395, register by sending an e-mail to Theo Albanis on theo@thedigitalship.com .

About Shipdex

If all the information normally supplied on manuals is available electronically, it becomes much easier to have the right information, fully updated, readily available wherever it is needed. Manufacturers can easily send service updates whenever necessary, which replace the outdated information.

It is much easier to order the right spare parts; and it is much easier to transfer the information to a different computer system, if the vessel changes management or is sold.

Right now, shipowners have to deal with the headache of tablefuls of paper manuals. This photo (below) shows the manuals which came with a brand new, $30m ship delivered in 2008 to Intership Navigation, with none of it supplied electronic at all.

The manuals supplied with a new $30m ship How the manuals are supplied with a brand new $30m ship today

It is hard to find what you want, it is often out of date, when you need new parts all the part numbers have been changed, it is a long tedious task typing the information into your maintenance and purchasing system, you have to laboriously photocopy it if you want to make copies, and when the vessel is sold or changes management, you have to find all the manuals and do it all over again.

"When a ship is sold, the shipowner has to go to the manufacturer and say, do you have xyz catalogue in your basement. And manufacturers do charge wehen a manual is photocopied and sent to the vessel," says Captain Eugen Adami, managing director of Intership Navigation.

Making the manuals electronic does not mean having them in pdf. A pdf manual is a great improvement over paper manuals, because it is easier to file, transport, and copy, but it is still hard to make sure that you always have the most updated manual, and to import it into maintenance management software.

What the Shipdex project aims to do is the same as the aviation and defence / navy industry does - put ship manuals into an XML format.

The manual is supplied in short chapters of text or images, which can include a description of an item or a procedure. These chapters can automatically be imported into the maintenance and purchasing system and updated automatically.

Background to Shipdex

Any software installed on board needs to have data preloaded into it to be operational for maintenance and quality and safety purposes.

According to SpecTec, the world’s largest IT supplier in shipping, loading data is a specialised and difficult task, often overlooked by some IT suppliers and many shipowners, with the result that many IT systems on board fail because data is scarce, incorrectly inserted or provided in form of a “skeleton database”.

The background to the Shipdex project was derives from a combined brainstorm meeting amongst two shipping companies, Intership Navigation (Cyprus) and Grimaldi Compagnia di Navigazione (Naples), who between them were ordering 100 new dry bulk vessels, and SpecTec, their IT Solution provider.

SpecTec, which has a very large team of over 40 professionals exclusively dedicated to data entry, was challenged by the two shipowners to provide a cheaper and faster solution to the “normal” manual database construction. The solution proposed by SpecTec to use a subset of ASD S1000D, a standard widely used in the Aeronautic for Interactive Electronic Data Publication, was enthusiastically accepted by Intership and Grimaldi, who thought it would be a good idea to use their purchasing leverage to persuade some of the big equipment manufacturers to provide manual information electronically.

With the carrot that the shipowners were willing to pay the costs of converting the manual into electronic data, and the stick that they threatened to take their business elsewhere if it wasn't done, many suppliers have agreed.

So far MAN B&W, Alfa Laval, Macgregor and Yanmar Company, major suppliers of equipment (including engines) to dry bulk vessels, have agreed to be founder members of the Shipdex initiative. Now Intership and Grimaldi say they will only purchase equipment if the manuals are supplied in this format. Now, for the new vessels, the manuals for main engines, auxiliary engines, engine equipment, hatch covers and purifiers will all be supplied electronically.

"From now on, we will ask for all data about newbuildings to be in this standard," says Mr. Giancarlo Coletta, purchasing director, Grimaldi Group Naples.

Shipdex is not thought to be an overall cost for suppliers; there will be expense involved in putting all of the data into the standard the first time, and a registration fee to be allowed to use the Shipdex protocol, but after that there should be savings for them, because it is much easier for them to make updates and send them out to the ships, says Giampiero Soncini, CEO of SpecTec.

SpecTec has accepted to put all its ILS (Integrated Logistic Systems) know-how and expertise into the project and has taken a co-ordination role for the project, headed by Marco Vatteroni, who previously worked with the electronic standard ASD S1000D at Fincantieri building Naval ships.

The standard, created by SpecTec , will be available for all companies to use free of charge (the registration fee being minimal and used only to cover the costs of maintaining the web site and providing updates to the protocol), including shipowners, ship managers, suppliers of maritime equipment and software providers; Intership and Grimaldi will own the copyright.
Shipdex was launched at Digital Ship Cyprus on Feb 7 2007.
For further information see www.shipdex.com ,