DNV GL opened two digital fleet performance centres in Hamburg and Singapore to support their ECO Insight customers in monitoring and optimizing their fleets. Expert systems at the fleet performance centres are able to check incoming vessel data from customers using the ECO Insight platform, providing quality control of the data and offering suggestions on potential improvement levers for both individual vessels and fleets, such as identifying speed loitering and over-usage of auxiliary engines or boilers.
The performance centre provides comprehensive and customizable fleet monitoring. In development and in operational trials for the last nine months, it is already supporting pilot clients in Asia and Europe daily with data quality and performance alerts, performance reviews, and ad-hoc investigations into performance issues and claims cases, among others. In addition to machine-learning systems, dedicated DNV GL performance managers verify the validity of performance alerts before they are being send to customers. They also look at why performance is different between vessels of the same fleet and propose actions.
“We are very glad to have partnered with DNV GL. It is of great value to us when performance experts provide a ‘second pair of eyes‘ on our fleet and give us real-time warnings if vessels are not being operated in the most efficient manner,” said Christian Rychly, managing director of the German shipping company Leonhardt & Blumberg, during the opening and ribbon cutting ceremony of the new fleet centre in Hamburg. “To mitigate the market pressure, we exactly need those tools which enhance our efficiency and help us to comply with the ever more challenging environmental regulations,” he added. As one of the pilot customers the concept has been developed with, Leonhardt & Blumberg has installed the ECO Insight tool already on 35 of its vessels, with more than 20 planned to follow soon.
“The fleet performance centres are just one of the ways we are working to use digitalization to help our customers enhance their competitiveness through improved efficiency, greater safety, and increased margins,” said Knut Ørbeck-Nilssen, CEO of DNV GL – Maritime. “Without the valuable contribution of pilot customers such as Leonhardt & Blumberg, we wouldn’t have been able to develop this innovative solution. By working together, we can now truly see the benefits of ‘big data’ in shipping – and giving ship managers a direct line to our trusted expert advice, makes taking these gains even easier.”
The launch of the fleet performance centres is the first building block of the new ECO Insight 2.0, to be released in August 2017. Only two and a half years after its launch, ECO Insight is already the market leader, with 1.400 vessels from 80 customers around the globe. ECO Insight provides a comprehensive and easily accessible way to manage the performance of a fleet by combining vessel reported data with industry information, including voyage, hull and propeller, engine and systems, and fuel quality performance.