New Approaches to Through-life Asset Management in the Maritime Industry

Abstract

European shipbuilders are facing a strong, worldwide competition. Consequently they have to reinvent their market approach and expand their business. In the past, European shipbuilders were focused on cost reduction in the production process to offer new build vessels at a competitive price for decades. Changing the focus from the selling price optimisation to the life cycle cost optimisation could lead to competitive advantages and enable new business opportunities. This new approach of through-life asset management is investigated in the EU- funded project ThroughLife. The minimisation of a vessel’ life cycle costs could be realised by applying new and innovative technologies. However, new technologies are characterised by higher investment costs and uncertainty regarding functionality, reliability and reparability. As a result, the situation can be characterised as a dilemma for the new building yard the ship owner and the repair yard. Therefore the ThroughLife project focuses besides the development of new technologies on the identification, elaboration and application of new business model concepts to overcome this dilemma. One business model concept is the offer of a comprehensive service package against a fixed, time based fee, which would lead to an overall cost reduction due to economies of scale, lower administration costs and a risk reduction for the customer, which would support the market penetration of new technologies. Combining this business model approach with the technology of monitoring sensors increases the potential of this approach. The service provider could use the gathered information to schedule maintenance according to the actual condition of the vessel and identify potential mistreatment by the client. The customer would benefit from reduced, calculable costs and a lower risk level when applying new technologies. Further research contains lifecycle cost model calculations as well as real-life tests of the monitoring hardware in order to proof the concept.