Maritime Equipment Research Articles

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION CAPABILITY AND INTERACTION EFFECT IN A SCANDINAVIAN INDUSTRY CLUSTER

How do innovation ecosystems affect the technological innovation capabilities (TICs), as defined by Yam et al. (2004), and company performance? Empirical data was acquired through a survey of 75 maritime equipment suppliers in an industry cluster in Norway. Regression analysis was supplemented with partial least square methods in order to compensate for the low number of respondents. Significant effects were found for manufacturing and marketing capabilities on company performance. The results for organisational capability were method dependent. Learning, R&D, resource allocation and strategic capabilities were identified as insignificant. These results conflict with other studies that identified manufacturing capabilities as the only insignificant TIC construct. However, the findings are partially in line with studies that have questioned learning, organising, and resource capabilities as drivers for competitive advantages. The moderating effect of cluster interaction and manufacturing capability on performance is coherent with prior research, but further research is needed for a deeper understanding of these interaction effects.

Eco-Innovation Drivers in Value-Creating Networks: A Case Study of Ship Retrofitting Services

Previous studies discuss how regulatory, technological and market drivers increasingly challenge manufacturing industries to adopt eco-innovations. However, the understanding of the process by which eco-innovations are developed and commercialized as a result of these drivers is not yet well established, in particular because these drivers are perceived differently by the end-users and their suppliers. In this paper, we address the following research question: How do eco-innovation drivers shape processes in value-creating networks? To answer this question, we carried out a case study purposely selected to understand how eco-innovation drivers, such as regulation, market pull and technology, interact and affect the eco-innovation decisions in a given industry. We analyzed the processes in an eco-innovation initiative about retrofitting old ships, contextualized in the maritime equipment and supply industry. The paper makes two novel contributions: First, we develop a framework that can support supply-network eco-innovation initiatives to deal with changes at the regulatory, market and technology levels. The framework includes elements, such as value co-creation to explore technological opportunities emerging from the interaction of the drivers or value proposition development to align multiple actors’ interests in the network and agree on shared expectations to exploit the opportunities. Second, we contribute to the emerging research area on eco-innovation processes by highlighting the lesser-known role of value-creating network dynamics. Value-creating networks can be a platform for the development of more radical eco-innovations if actors in the networks can align their value creation and capture objectives.

舶用機器の変遷 - 船の電気システムの移り変わり50年

舶用機器の変遷 - 船の電気システムの移り変わり50年

From Fishing Gear to Granulates and Recycled Steel – An Eco Innovation Project

Plastix A/S, a cleantech company located in Lemvig, Denmark, received in August 2014 funding for the project Retrawl2, which is a part of the EU initiative ECO-Innovation project. Retrawl2 is co-funded by the European Union with the CIP ECO-Innovation initiative of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme, CIP. The aim of the RETRAWL is to upscale an innovative recycling technology, which transforms used maritime waste into plastic and steel commodities. The plastics are mainly polyamides and polyethylene from nets and trawls, and the steel are mainly carbon steel from taifun wires as parts of the nets and trawls.The suppliers of the used maritime equipment are Danish and other European fishing harbours, where equipment are stored, because it can be a challenge for the fishermen to dispose it. Also ghost nets are collected and delivered for recycling. In order to recycle nets to commodity plastics considerations of the quality of the product has been taken. The nets are made of materials of a high quality, because the abrasion resistance, the tension strength and the chemical resistance need to be high for the use of them in trawl. The quality of the recycled plastics will be high, when they are gently treated under the cutting, separation, washing and extrusion processes. In the processes the gently handling of the polymers is in focus to keep the degree of polymerisation of the polymers, since the strength of the plastics depends on the chain length of the polymers. The quality and the identity of the recycled plastics are verified through infrared spectroscopi, FTIR, differential scanning calorimetry, DSC, measuring the tensile strength and the elongation to break, measuring the melt flow index and the distribution of the grain size. The used fishing nets may have a significant smell of fish from trimethyl amine and rancid smell from oxidized fatty acids. The smell will disappear under the production mainly because of the volatility of trimethyl amine. The fatty acids will be partly degraded under the production, and if there is a remaining part, they will act as plastisizers in polyethylene and polyamide with a minor influence on the strength of the product. In the steel plant the plastic covers of taifun wires are melted off with energy supply from an induction technology. The steel will afterwards be cut in pieces with length up to 1 meter. The capacity of the extrusion line is planned to be 24 ton per day 7 days per week, and on the steel line the capacity is planned to be 8 – 10 ton steel per day 5 days per week. The amount of used fishing equipment for that production will be approximately 40 ton per day. During 2015 another extrusion line will be ready allowing the doubling of the production.

A Study of Factors Relating to Work Accidents among Seamen

In Japan, the accident rate for seamen is 5 times higher than that for all other industries. Many maritime work accidents are related to the poor ergonomic conditions of the working environment. It is particularly important to examine seamen safety in terms of vessel type and seamen age, as these factors are related to various sorts of accidents. In this paper, maritime work accidents were analyzed according to fundamental factors including vessel type, seamen age, and seamen rank. It is suggested that safety education should be provided according specifically to seamen age and vessel type, as they are revealed to be strong factors relating to maritime work accidents. Such education and further research may also lead to improvements in maritime equipment in relation to worker safety.

Channel access algorithm design for automatic identification system

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a maritime equipment to allow an efficient exchange of the navigational data between ships and between ships and shore stations. It utilizes a channel access algorithm which can quickly resolve conflicts without any intervention from control stations. In this paper, a design of channel access algorithm for the AIS is presented. The input/output relationship of each access algorithm module is defined by drawing the state transition diagram, dataflow diagram and flowchart based on the technical standard, ITU-R M.1371. In order to verify the designed channel access algorithm, the simulator was developed using the C/C++ programming language. The results show that the proposed channel access algorithm can properly allocate transmission slots and meet the operational performance requirements specified by the technical standard.

造舶Web : -造船・舶用機器両業界の電子協業への試み-

造舶Web : -造船・舶用機器両業界の電子協業への試み-