Japanese shipping company ‘K’ Line has confirmed that it has completed phase 2 of its ‘Kawasaki Integrated Maritime Solutions’ project, a joint undertaking with Kawasaki Heavy Industries Group that first began in March 2016, introducing a range of data gathering and analysis tools to make vessel operations safer and more cost effective.
Among the newly developed tools is a KPI-Monitor, which will provide automatic calculation and monitoring of parameters such as fuel consumption, main engine output and stand by time, based on requirements defined by each individual vessel or department. Automated alerts will provide instant feedback on any abnormal activity within these parameters.
Other performance monitoring tools include a Hull Fouling Evaluation system and an Optimum Trim Calculator, to identify potential areas of improvement, while navigation support has been enhanced through the addition of an automatic data transfer function to transfer voyage plans created in a vessel’s ECDIS into the Kawasaki Integrated Maritime Solutions infrastructure.
To better manage its increased data load, ‘K’ Line has also introduced a new optimised server configuration to handle its Big Data requirements, and added a new function to monitor the reliability of data transmissions and automatically inform administrators when any data transmission from a ship has failed.