Marine Machinery Condition Monitoring: Why has the shipping industry been slow to adopt?

摘要

Fewer than 17% of the worlds classed ships operate with an approved planned maintenance system (PMS) which enables the chief engineer to credit allowable machinery items for the purposes of survey. Only 12% of these ships use Condition Monitoring (CM) to enable survey credit without recourse to strip-down inspection. It is surprising that so few ships are enrolled on PMS and CM schemes with their classification provider and that the majority of these vessels (70%) are managed out of Europe. As the reliability of marine machinery is critical to the success of the modern ship operator, it is curious that the willingness of companies to devise an optimal maintenance strategy based upon the needs of the machine as opposed schedules created by the manufacturer is not greater. The reason companies take this position is not so clear but may be rooted in the power shift where control has moved away from the ship towards the office. This position paper is intended to provide the reader with an understanding of some of these issues and secondly offer a suggested method by which companies can assess their own businesses in order to define a company specific improvement strategy. In addition it outlines the main issues facing the industry from the perspective of the classification society and the growing need to develop more useful and supportive relationships whilst maintaining the role as custodians of the rules.