Rolls-Royce Health Management Solutions to Harness Power of Data

Rolls-Royce continues to develop its ship intelligence offerings to the market, and now introduces a pioneering new solution for Health Management of ship equipment.

The technology is aimed at elevating the way in which customers manage and maintain the equipment and systems onboard their ships.

Health Management is designed to provide ship operators with an unsurpassed level of understanding of the operational health and performance of all the machinery installations onboard.

Developed by the Ship Intelligence team at Rolls-Royce, the latest development of Health Management uses ship data combined with advanced machine learning techniques. The system is able to provide deeper insight into the performance of installed ship equipment, and consequently the full ship system onboard one or more vessels.

Marco Cristoforo Camporeale, Rolls-Royce, VP Intelligent Asset Management – Ship Intelligence, said: “Our ambition is to ensure that customers are able to take more informed decisions about maintenance of the most critical components on their vessels, with the help of the latest secure technology.

 “The Health Management system from Rolls-Royce Commercial Marine will help ship operators to extend availability, as there will be less planned off-hire for maintenance. The system will also reduce ownership costs. Another key benefit is that Health Management will increase safety, by detecting anomalies on mission critical components at an earlier stage, helping the crew to take preventative measures to avoid incidents and unplanned off-hire.”

The Health Management technology is now the first solution on the market that integrates both performance and health management data. Shipowners will be able to understand how an anomaly in the propulsion system can influence performance in other areas, for instance fuel consumption, and vice-versa.

Rolls-Royce has already secured its first contract for Health Management technology. Thrusters, generators and engines on Awilco’s recently-announced new build semi-submersible rig, will all be covered by the solution, with the potential for other products to be added in future.

Anders Paulsen, Rolls-Royce, Head of Research and Technology – Intelligent Asset Management, Ship Intelligence, added: “With the extended focus on general equipment, Health Management can now also deliver much more than single engine or thruster monitoring, we can achieve a holistic view of the state of all the equipment aboard any vessel in an owner’s fleet.”

A fleet-wide introduction of sensors and information technology systems onboard today’s ships, enables the Health Management system to manage all the amassed data using advanced machine learning technology, via the Cloud. Health Management technology pushes machine learning into edge computing and delivers immediate feedback to the crew on board about the conditions of the equipment manufactured by Rolls-Royce as well as third party equipment.

A secure end-to-end platform collects, transfers, stores, and evaluates the data before encapsulating the information into machine learning models that are relayed back to the ship. End-users then have real-time access to key information regarding the health of their onboard equipment and systems.

As well as the information presented on a mobile dashboard onboard the ship, the same information is sent through to a customer portal shore-side, where the company’s support personnel and data scientists can further analyse the data.

With the introduction of the latest Health Management technology, Rolls-Royce brings together all its accumulated Ship Intelligence know-how into one system. It is the first of its type, in that it creates a fully-fledged IoT platform in the Cloud; employs machine learning and builds artificial intelligence from large data sets; creates an edge computing platform at the vessel/installation; and provides a secure, fast and stable two-way communication between the ship and shore, that also accommodates poor bandwidth scenarios.

Per Huse, Rolls-Royce, Technical Product Manager, Intelligent Asset Management, Ship Intelligence, said: “This means that fleet managers will not only receive information about the functioning of their ships’ equipment but have access to insight and first-hand advice from specialist engineers.

“It revolutionises the way our customers manage their assets. By providing them with unparalleled insight into their equipment and systems, operating, maintenance, and downtime costs are significantly reduced.”