Do you think ship technical information should be electronic?

The Norwegian Shipping Club, Haakon VII's gt 1, Oslo - October 7th, 2008

In association with Shipdex -
The ultimate Ship Data Exchange Protocol

On October 7th 2008, Digital Ship will run its 2nd conference about Shipdex, the new standard protocol to provide ship technical information electronically, rather than on paper.

Shipdex was founded in 2007 by two senior managers of major shipping companies, Grimaldi Naples and Intership Navigation, who thought that by now the industry should be able to do something better than supply all the technical paperwork (including maintenance and repair manuals, lists of spare parts and drawings) as several shelf feet of paper documents, which then have to be tediously typed into company maintenance and purchasing systems - the information should be available electronically from the supplier, whether an equipment supplier or a shipyard.

They decided to do something about it, and the discussions led to the formation of a new international open standard for electronic ship technical information. See below for further information about Shipdex.

Companies sending delegates to the conference include Finnlines (Manager, Technical Management, superintendent), AET Tankers , (IT - AVP), Rolls Royce Marine (head of automation services, customer support specialist, naval customer information manager), Seagull (chairman), Ibruk AS (managing director), ABS Nautical Systems (Sales manager EMEA), MacGregor Bulk (technical administrator), Hoegh Autoliners (IT business analyst), Novoship UK (ICT manager), Alfa Laval Nordic (Key Account Manager/ Strategic Project Manager)

Chairperson: Karl Jeffery, conference producer, Digital Ship

Agenda

9.20 Introduction and explanation of what Shipdex is all about. Why the shipping industry needs Shipdex Giancarlo Coletta, purchasing director, Grimaldi Naples.
- Why the shipping community needs an electronic technical data standard
- Advantages and future developments from a shipowner's point of view

Dr. Giancarlo Coletta is the Purchasing and Maintenance & Cost Control Director of Grimaldi Group Naples, which owns one of the largest fleets of Ro-Ro multipurpose and car carrier vessels in the world. Grimaldi Group has a fleet of about 95 owned and chartered vessels, with regular liner services covering North Europe, the Mediterranean, West/Central Africa and South America, Baltics for the transport of cars, vans, trucks and other commercial vehicles, all types of containers, general cargo (paper, forestry products, etc.), and project cargo. About 2 million vehicles are carried each year. The Grimaldi Group (Naples) includes the following companies: Atlantica S.p.A. di Navigazione, Grimaldi Compagnia di Navigazione S.p.A., Industria Armamento Meridionale S.p.A., Atlantic Container Line, Malta Motorways of the Sea Ltd and Finnlines. In addition the Grimaldi Group has a participation of 14% in ANEK line. www.grimaldi.napoli.it

9.50 A suppliers' perspective - impact Shipdex has on MacGREGOR's way of working
Katarina Munter, Manager, Technical Documentations Services, MacGREGOR

- What MacGREGOR has done so far and the extent of it
- Difficulties and benefits so far
- Why MacGREGOR chose Shipdex and what it expects from it.

MacGREGOR Group is a leading engineering and service company for the marine transportation and offshore industries. Products include hatch covers, cranes, equipment for RoRo ships and ports, and solutions for cargo lashing, bulk handling, offshore load-handling and naval logistics. 2007 net sales were Eur 748 million. www.macgregor-group.com

10.20 Kay Michael Goertz, operations manager - Germany.SpecTec
- Benefits of electronic documentation for ships

10.50 BREAK

11.20 Pawel Bury, IT manager, Intership navigation "Going live with Shipdex

- Intership Navigation's perspective on Shipdex
- Possible future developments

Pawel Bury is IT manager of Intership Navigation Co Ltd. Intership Navigation is principally a shipowning company which also offers third party management for a small number of European and Asian owners. It technically manages a fleet of 50 owned vessels, which consists of a different series of vessels of 23.000 DWT bulk carriers, 31.000 DWT bulk carriers, 17.800 DWT and 8,000 DWT multi-purpose tweendeckers, 37.000 DWT lakers, as well as a number of smaller vessels, all trading on a worldwide scale. In addition to its owned fully managed vessels, ISN partly manages an additional fleet of 70 ships on a crew management basis. www.intership-cyprus.com

11.50 Why Alfa Laval is supporting Shipdex.

Mats Ottosson, Strategic Project Manager, Alfa Laval Parts & Service Equipment , with Pavel Minarik, Strategic Projects Coordinator, Alfa Laval Parts & Service Equipment

- Standardization throughout the full process
- Becoming Shipdex compatible without compromising on flexibility to meet up with other industries' and customers' demands regarding technical publications

Alfa Laval is serving most industries and the 3 key technologies are Separation, Heat Transfer and Fluid Handling. Our key technologies are adapted to each customer segment and offered separately or combined into optimized solutions. Our mission is: To optimize the performance of our customers’ processes. Time and time again.

Mats Ottosson has a MSc in Mechanical Engineering - Logistics and Economics. 5 years working experience within Parts and Service at ABB Automation. 6 years in total with Alfa Laval Parts & Service Equipment, as business developer within Market Unit Marine & Diesel and the last 1,5 years as Strategic Project Manager.

Pavel Minarik has 14 years working experience within Alfa Laval, heading the technical publications group within Marine & Diesel for 10 years. Then changed position to Part & Service Competence Development with training and e-learning, with a focus to serve external and internal needs and now acting as Project Coordinator since a half year back.

12.20 Panel discussion - with Christer Bruzelius, Senior Vice President Ship Management, Finnlines

Finnlines operates freight services in Northern Europe and passenger services in the Baltic Sea. It has 36 ro-ro vessels, 15 of which can also take passengers. All have an ice class of 1A or above. Finnlines Shipmanagement is the empoyer of all crewmembers on Swedish, Finnish and German flagged vessels owned by Finnlines, and has responsibility for safety, security, environment and technical management including normal maintenance and dry-docking of vessels. It organises purchase contracts including bunker agreements and onboard services. www.finnlines.fi

12.50 Lunch

2.00 Introductory technical aspects of Shipdex. Marco Vatteroni, Shipdex author and ILS manager, SpecTec

- What it is possible to do with Shipdex
- Live demonstration - creating a database for ship maintenance and purchasing software, such as SpecTec's AMOS, from a Shipdex data set.

Marco Vatteroni did a lot of the work to develop the ShipDex standard and is currently its technical manager. He is Italian representative to the ASD/AIA Spec 1000D SPWG Committee (Sea Publication Working Group). Marco Vatteroni is Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) manager with SpecTec, the world's largest maritime software company. Before that he was working at Italian shipyard Fincantieri, developing computerised maintenance systems, and participating in a Navy industries working group to develop a new electronic standard. www.spectec.net

2.30 - Experience using S1000D (which Shipdex is based on) in military and aeronautical projects - Sylvia Schwab, senior systems engineer, CORENA Norway
- The presentation will give an overview of the S1000D specification and how it is used to create and manage information objects for technical publications.

CORENA, based in Denmark, offers services for document management and system integration of comprehensive and critical information. Clients include Boeing, Bombardier, Scandinavian Airlines System SAS, Singapore Airlines, Rolls-Royce. Sylvia has an extensive background from working with international standards over the last 15 years, both as an information analyst and as a project manager. Recent engagements involve integrations of solutions and harmonization of processes utilizing standards such as PLCS, S1000D, and SCORM. Sylvia serves as the International Project Co-Chair of the S1000D-SCORM Harmonization Project. www.corena.com

3.00 - Present and Future in Digital Management of Class Information Alessia Vergine, Basic and Applied Research, Team Leader, Marine Division, RINA SpA

- Using digital techniques to improve management of class information and processes
- How Shipdex will speed up date management - based on the RINA IT software suite "Leonardo."
- Using Shipdex to improve traceability of onboard equipment maintenance and surveillance

Alessia Vergine is team leader for the Basic and Applied Research team of RINA’s Marine Division, covering management and co-ordination of research and development projects. Since joining RINA in 1999, she has worked in research and development, machinery approval and marine service. She has a degree in nuclear engineering from the Politecnico of Turin. www.rina.org

3.30 - Panel discussion

4.00 - Close

This conference follows a successful event in Hamburg in May about Shipdex, which was attended by companies including Rosemount Tank Radar, Vroon, A.P. Moller - Maersk, Atlantic Container Line, Jan De Nul n.v., d'Amico, Carnival UK, Lyngso Marine A/S, DNV Maritime Partner AS, BP Shipping Ltd, Furuno European Branch Office, Raytheon Anschuetz Gmbh, Helix ESG Deepwater Unit.

Click on the image below to download a comprehensive report of the Hamburg conference.

Do you think that ship technical information, such as equipment manuals, drawings and maintenance information, should be available electronically, rather than only on paper?

This is the question we will discuss at Digital Ship's second conference about Shipdex, a new electronic protocol to make provide ship technical information electronically, led by shipping companies Grimaldi and Intership Navigation, and based on S1000D, the standard format used in aviation and defence.

The conference will be held at Oslo Shippingklubben on October 7th.

Electronic information should be easier to retrieve, file, store, archive and transport than paper documents, and is much easier to import into the company maintenance and purchasing systems, leading to improvements in safety and making work onboard more pleasant.

There could be plenty of further advantages to an electronic stanard for ship technical information - such as being able to use it to comply with IMO's ship recycling documentation requirements and sharing information with authorities and class.

The challenge is - how do you encourage shipyards and equipment suppliers to do things in a different way from how they have done it for hundreds of years when - let's face it - documentation is a low priority for either shipowners or shipyards at the time of making a purchase.

If you agree that electronic ship technical information sounds like a good idea, whether you work for a shipping company, shipyard, equipment supplier or IT provider, why not support the initiative by attending our conference on October 7.

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 2008.
For further information see www.shipdex.com ,