We4Sea and Inmarsat have secured the fleet-wide uptake of We4Sea’s web-based vessel performance monitoring service with the Roll Group. The heavy-lift shipowner placed the order after having trialled the cloud-based ship performance management tool.
Dutch performance monitoring company We4Sea recently joined the group of certified providers of Inmarsat, which offer applications via Inmarsat’s digital solutions Fleet Data and Fleet Connect. The order of Roll Group marks the first We4Sea-Inmarsat collaboration. The company trialled the dual installation of Fleet Xpress with the Fleet Data IoT platform embedded on board the RollDock Star and RollDock Storm without commitment.
The combination of the free of charge Fleet Data and application trialling without risk will provide a ‘tipping point’ for maritime digitalisation, according to Marco Cristoforo Camporeale, Head of Maritime Digital, Inmarsat.
He adds: ‘This is the first example of a future-proof IoT set-up for ships that allow owners to investigate digitalisation without commitment. They can assess applications off the shelf and, if they work, agree on terms. In this case, the We4Sea trials on RollDock Star and RollDock Storm helped optimise speed and generator efficiency that led to a significant cut in fuel consumption.’
Digital Twin
Requiring no hardware onboard, the We4Sea application uses a Digital Twin as the basis for comparison with the most easily accessible ship and operating profile data.
Variations with the Digital Twin and ship data are flagged as potential inefficiencies that need action or correction reporting. Under the Certified Application Provider agreement, We4Sea cloud analytics uses the dedicated Fleet Data bandwidth to secure always-on, or on-demand ship-shore communication via an Application Programming Interface.
‘We4Sea and Inmarsat’s solution improves our monitoring possibilities and increases the effectiveness of communication with vessels. In this way we can keep investing and improving our state-of-the-art vessels,’ explains Michiel van der Knaap, Fleet Director, Roll Group.
Also read: Unifeeder to use Digital Twin across its fleet to save on fuel and emissions
‘A lot of owners understand that their vessels should be connected to the internet, but still think in terms of remote monitoring based on conventional connectivity using expensive bandwidth,’ says Dan Veen, Founder and CEO of We4Sea. ‘Using an IoT-based platform, We4Sea has proved itself to be able to deliver measurable performance improvements, even when connecting to only eight standard shipboard datasets at a fixed monthly fee.’
