Ship Repair and Maintenance Undergoing a Paradigm Shift

Flyability, a Swiss company engaged in building drones, has released its Elios drones, that are specifically designed to be used in confined spaces. The drone provides an extensive support in visual inspection of ship structures.

IoT Enabling Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance is a proactive approach to solving unplanned interruptions due to equipment failure that eventually resulted in a costly maritime “downtime” affair. This approach is rather an abstract of predictions as compared to the preventive maintenance systems. The primary aspect of such maintenance is the proactive analysis that reveals and ascertain subsequent trends of the shipboard equipment or the machinery conditions, thereby warning the operators of the looming failure.

With IoT components, ships can carry out predictive or condition-based maintenance. Predictive maintenance uses ML models to compare current data with similar data from before a known failure of the equipment. The models identify patterns and alert the operators about the need for repair or replace the component. For machinery and hull monitoring, this avoids unnecessary maintenance and replacement and simultaneously reduces breakdown frequency and off-hire time.

Utilization of Robotics

Assembly, inspection, manipulation, and exploration are some examples of tasks that could be programmed into a robot to conduct operations in many industries, from shipping to space missions—with different levels of independent decision-making can be programmed. Apart from being remotely controlled, robots can also complete complex tasks—either supervised, collaborative, or fully autonomous.

Driven by improving safety, security, and productivity, the widespread adoption of robotics has been observed across various sectors. Recently, industrial robots have been dominantly used by the automobile industry and nearly half of professional service robots have been used by the defence sector.

Although small in unit number, the construction industry has seen some of the largest growth in the purchase of professional service robots in recent years. While in the marine construction business, the knowledge of technology will revolutionise the future marine service and and robotics will become an integral part for tasks, especially those conducted in severe working environment, such as deep ocean mining and disaster relief.

Progressing Ahead

Technology trends will definitely alter business model and propel the ship repair and maintenance industry to be more competitive in the global market. Although in general, growth is low in any industry adoption of Industry 4.0, the first mover advantage could benefit from early adoption and quickly learn from their experience to be more innovative. Global initiative towards Industry 4.0 will set a new policy and standardization in the industry for industry players to harness the benefit and reduce risk of the Industry 4.0 adoption.

In the coming days, innovative technologies ike — Robotics, IoT, and Drones, will create a paradigm shift in the ship repairing industry, thereby helping the total maritime ecosystem to level up its game in the global space.