Business Process Integration in Maritime Fleet Management
BUSINESS PROCESS INTEGRATION IN MARITIME FLEET MANAGEMENT
(Generic analysis of a large fleet management and recommendation)
Initial assessment of the maritime sector in general
In the maritime sector there are several IT companies offering a wide variety of software packages supporting business processes specific to fleet management. The aim is to ease the management decision making process and help the ship’s crew with their tasks. The most common applications include voyage planning, spares inventory, purchasing, ship management, route planning, container loading, cost tracking, loading calculations, accounting, cargo loading and training.
The result is that Maritime IT systems purchased and in use by ship owners and operators currently consist of a combination of applications from many different software vendors using different software platforms/processing hardware and interfaces. As such they are not necessarily compatible and do not, as a whole, offer optimized performance or result in the most efficient use of information for decision making.
The requirement, unchanged for many years now, is for integrated fleet management systems which includes all the functionalities listed above but with seamless integration between the packages. The architecture of future integrated fleet management systems should be such as to ease the introduction of new business software packages as they become available.
Modularity and standardization are key parameters in such a system, but it would be important to analyze why such methods have not work up to now.
This study will review the currently available software packages and the early fleet management systems now becoming available in terms of their applicability to future integrated fleet management systems and the implications to business and ship operations.
Key areas to be addressed include detailed process models in the following areas:
• Chartering
• Fleet Scheduling and voyage management
• Maintenance
(Generic analysis of a large fleet management and recommendation)
Initial assessment of the maritime sector in general
In the maritime sector there are several IT companies offering a wide variety of software packages supporting business processes specific to fleet management. The aim is to ease the management decision making process and help the ship’s crew with their tasks. The most common applications include voyage planning, spares inventory, purchasing, ship management, route planning, container loading, cost tracking, loading calculations, accounting, cargo loading and training.
The result is that Maritime IT systems purchased and in use by ship owners and operators currently consist of a combination of applications from many different software vendors using different software platforms/processing hardware and interfaces. As such they are not necessarily compatible and do not, as a whole, offer optimized performance or result in the most efficient use of information for decision making.
The requirement, unchanged for many years now, is for integrated fleet management systems which includes all the functionalities listed above but with seamless integration between the packages. The architecture of future integrated fleet management systems should be such as to ease the introduction of new business software packages as they become available.
Modularity and standardization are key parameters in such a system, but it would be important to analyze why such methods have not work up to now.
This study will review the currently available software packages and the early fleet management systems now becoming available in terms of their applicability to future integrated fleet management systems and the implications to business and ship operations.
Key areas to be addressed include detailed process models in the following areas:
• Chartering
• Fleet Scheduling and voyage management
• Maintenance