ABS published the Guide for Smart Functions for Marine Vessels and Offshore Units (Smart Guide) to assist marine and offshore owners and operators leverage their operational data. The Smart Guide introduces a class approach leading to the marine and offshore industries’ first set of notations to help owners and operators qualify and use smart functions.
With the analytics that they provide, smart functions can manage asset health and performance, providing a mechanism for sustainability and improved uptime. Smart functions can also lead to increasingly condition-based approaches to maintenance strategies and class surveys.
The approach described in the Guide applies a risk-informed set of easy-to-apply prescriptive requirements for engineering review and survey of the smart technology applications.
The use of operational data and analytics, like machine learning, allow for better decisions regarding vessel performance and can also provide early indicators to prevent failures and downtime. The implementation of smart functions also helps crew members and shore-based staff make decisions to make corrective actions faster.
Smart technology will be a key factor for industry sustainability in the coming years. Future adoption of smart technology and its ability to enable better decision making and continuous improvement will coincide with quickly changing environmental requirements
stated ABS Chairman, President and CEO Christopher J. Wiernicki.
The Smart Guide covers functions about performance, health, and crew support. It also introduces three new notations to support the recognition of a ship’s data infrastructure, along with health monitoring functions, which can be used to directly support survey activity.
- Smart INF: Data Infrastructure for Smart Function Implementation;
- Smart MHM: Machinery Health Monitoring;
- Smart SHM: Structural Health Monitoring.
In addition, aiming to support a streamlined integration of vendor products and services surrounding smart functionality, the Smart Guide also establishes a Product Design Assessment scheme as well as a Service Provider approval process to support equipment manufacturers, shipyards, owners and third party software providers, in their attempt to develop products and services for smart functionality for use onboard ABS-classed vessels.
The Smart Guide comes after the release of Guidance Notes published in 2018, which set out a goal-based approach to support ship operators apply smart functionality on marine and offshore assets.
See more information in the PDF below
