In this post I'll cover the following topics that are important to think about when considering Vessel Performance.
- What is Vessel Performance
- What are Bessel Performance Management Systems
- Important KPI's to Consider
- Fuel Savings
- Data Processing & Usage
- The 3 P's of Vessel Performance
What is Vessel Performance?
Vessel Performance overall is the ship’s performance over time. With the recent changes in compliance regulations set by the IMO (International Maritime Organization), the awareness among the crew members and owners about their ship performance has become increasingly important. They need to know whether their ships are satisfying all the required environmental compliances, and how much is the ship's energy consumption, fuel costs, and operating costs. This is where “vessel performance management” comes into action. Vessel performance management offers and supports the owners, crew members, and other customers to reduce energy consumption, fuel usage, and operating costs of the ships while supporting environmental compliances. This is done by benchmarking the efficiencies of its historical performance allowing opportunities to minimize fuel usage and CO2 emissions, which are major challenges in the shipping industry. Therefore, vessel performance provides a highly customizable and a change in the configuration of a particular vessel or a fleet of vessels to satisfy the owner's and customer's needs.
What are Vessel Performance Management systems?
Now that we understand the need of having a vessel performance management system. These systems at the fundamental level require the collection of large data, by data I mean the various records that are measured by the shipboard staff in the form of noon reports, sensors placed inside the vessels, and other sources like the AIS data or the telemetry data. Every organization has its data policies and data format by which they maintain these records on priority to monitor their ship’s performance. Most of these are unstructured or semi-structured data and require a lot of data manipulation to derive in-depth insights into the performance.
With the rapid digitalization in the shipping industry, the quantity, and quality of data available today have changed dramatically. Advanced digital technologies have helped to measure, report, and communicate well between the ship and shore providing any operation happening in the vessel to analyze at any given time. This kind of feedback becomes very critical, it eventually helps in pinpointing the inefficiencies and making faster decisions for improving the safe and efficient operation of vessels, leading to the company’s sustainability objectives.
Important KPIs to consider:
These systems are cost-effective and provide details about various key performance indicators (KPIs) with high accuracy that are critical to monitoring vessel performance. Few essential indicators like CO2 efficiency, hull, main engine & auxiliary equipment analysis, speed-power curve, engine load curves, tracking fuel consumption, trim, propeller condition, weather conditions, and total cost savings provide the shipowners and managers with information to make critical decisions to help increase the efficiency of their fleet.
Fuel Savings:
Among these KPIs, the most important indicator is the amount of fuel consumption of the vessel. With the mission of net zero carbon emission, the organizations are trying to cover the basic compliances related to the Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI), Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator (EEOI), and Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII). Developing solutions to optimize fuel consumption considers various factors such as environmental conditions and intrinsic design features of the ship like the hull and propeller condition. Hull hydrodynamics is a major critical factor for the vessel's performance because as the resistance offered by the sea becomes greater, more fuel would be required to maneuver the vessel through the water. Also considering the environmental factors such as wind force, speed, and direction, current speed, and direction, sometimes may or may not favor the movement of the vessel. Keeping track or knowing the weather conditions would help to provide an optimum route for the captains to navigate their voyage in the best route possible. This helps to choose the best engine operating conditions and the speed for the vessel in the given situation. Over time the hull performance reduces due to fouling and the vessel has to be dry-docked to undergo hull and propeller cleaning. Any overconsumption of fuel with projection in time is estimated accurately so that the need to perform the hull and propeller cleaning can be decided and assessed simultaneously. Therefore the operators not only just want to cut costs but also try to achieve greater efficiencies. Weather-based route planning allows up to 3% fuel savings. Hull and propeller condition management can provide up to 10% fuel savings compared to a fouled hull. A well-optimized trimmed vessel is also believed to make energy savings by using the least expensive energy efficiency measures i.e by using simple ballast modification.
Data processing and usage:
The modern vessel performance management systems require a large amount of data but also require processing, interpretation, validation, and creation of reports delivery of charts to the navigation system (ECDIS) on board, as well as recommendations for the best route according to weather, fuel consumption, and other reports. Organizations are leveraging these systems with artificial intelligence and machine learning to bring out the patterns and insights also creating models for particular use cases. Therefore more the data, the better precise reports, and recommendations are generated by the system. The monitoring of vessel performance not only ensures safe and environmentally friendly operation but also minimizes cost largely. It also optimizes maintenance efforts, increasing equipment availability. Providing these systems to dedicated crew members onboard the vessels, with their professional skill and judgment, ensures the vessel is safe, “green” and as cost-efficient as possible.
The 3 P’s of Vessel Performance:
The current shipping market has more than 550+ apps that provide specific solutions for vessel performance, vessel management, optimization, navigation, and vessel tracking. With the availability of large data and ongoing advancement in technology, there are a few major determining factors that a vessel performance management system has in order to maximize its purpose. These are termed the 3 P’s of vessel performance.
The Platform:
A smart platform that is scalable and integrable, should be in place for any adaptations with technology and be able to manage high volumes of data. The platform should be confident in its aim and the results it would generate. These should be well presented in form of dashboards so that they can be easily understood by the stakeholders and the crew members. It must bring out the proactiveness of the users.
The People:
The people involved in the development of such systems are important. The correct mindset in order to work continuously for the betterment of such systems is needed. Having guided tech support and operational support system built by the people to answer any questions that the users bring in, is to be in place. Any consumer feedback must be taken into account with a motivation for improvement and handled with proper assessment. The people as a team should be able to access whether they are moving in the right direction that they wanted and strive in the market.
The Processes:
This means that the adaptations of various processes that are involved in the creation of such systems have to be very robust and smart. Processes like bringing in data and following the next set of steps in order to bring out the necessary insights and reports, how the reports should be prepared and in which format, and how the data is being handled both on the shore and vessel side, all these become crucial for the system to showcase its importance in the market. Hence having optimized robust processes become a key to providing good end-to-end optimization platforms that the organizations and customers believe in.