While many owners are turning to remote monitoring of vessels to improve the efficiency of their operations the move is not always popular with the crew.
Both Marorka and DNV GL have enjoyed considerable success with their remote monitoring solutions with DNV GL signing up 1,400 vessels from 75 owners over two and a half years to its ECO Insight fleet performance management solution and Marorka with some 600 ships on its system.
However, not everybody is happy about the idea of performance being remotely monitored and this issues was highlighted when the two companies were quizzed about “kick back” from the crew at the immediasea event on Monday.
“Some crews don’t like to be monitored. Some captains believe in their own skills,” commented Haraldur Orri Bjornsson, head of advisory for Marorka.
DNV GL principal consultant, fleet performance management Petter Andersen, said the key was to motivate the crew and you had to put the value in their hands. “It should not be a group of academics telling them how to run the ship,” he said.
It is not just crew that do not like remote monitoring and some owners also remain sceptical of its value.
“It’s a very conservative industry and some shipowners and operators feel that noon reporting is adequate, or that installing systems do not yield returns for charterers,” Bjornsson said.
Andersen said, “Our experience is often that the situation is not as good as the owner believes. In general there is more potential than people believe.”
DNV GL said that generally customers could identify efficiency gains of 5 – 20% in all of their projects.
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Source: Seatrade Maritime
