Task Assistant, your flexible
friend in ship management

The first recorded act of fleet management may have been when Ulysses ordered his crew to lash him to the mast of his vessel, to avoid his succumbing to the blandishments of the Sirens. The modern Ulysses fleet management system, known as Task Assistant, may lack a “Master Restraint Module”, but in most other respects it appears to offer up an extremely high level of functionality, which qualifies it as one of the leading such systems.
The customer base for fleet management software demonstrates however the challenges still faced by the creators of such solutions. One of Task Assistant’s main users is BP Shipping, with its fleet of 24 tankers transporting some 160 million tonnes of crude a year, as well as product and LNG carriers.
As one analyst explains: “BP is a systems-driven company which embraces fleet management software as a matter of course. Up front cost is not a consideration when moving its own high value cargoes, where efficiency and reliability are crucial, especially on regular shuttle or milk runs. It’s just another tool in an organisation where such devices are standard.”
It is on the other hand, something like Task Assistant, says the analyst, is a very different matter for a dedicated shipping line which is looking to maximize revenues by controlling costs. “The initial investment is considerable, not merely in the hardware and software and the linking communications infrastructure, but also in the training and in the management effort, to ensure the fullest level of utilisation of such a system.”

A growing market
Jan Kalland, marketing manager of Star Information Systems, a Norwegian provider of fleet management software, accepts that critical mass has yet to be reached and points to industry figures that suggest that less than half the world’s fleet has any sophisticated satellite communications at all. “Price of course is always a consideration”, he says, “but from what I see, this is at the bottom of their list. What they are really looking for is functionality. They like to go and see what other people are doing. We have 32 customers with some 500 vessels and since we launched our product suite in 1997, our business has grown steadily, in no small part through customer reference and recommendation.”
Star Information Systems, which grew out of a joint initiative between the Norwegian government and ship owners, to generate a common data model and database standard for fleet and ship management, is still a relatively small Bergen-based player. Ulysses by contrast has five offices in the USA, one in Singapore and European locations in London, Manchester, Athens and now Oslo.

	PHOTO: ULYSSES

Task Assistant is flexible
“We chose Task Assistant”, explains BP’s deputy chief of staff, Capt. Martin Shaw, “because it is very flexible and could be tailored to BP’s requirements. It gives us the underlying network of infrastructure for continuous improvement, incorporating our entire operational and quality management system. It facilitates control of our fleet, with instant access to information across all areas of fleet and office. It is user friendly, cost efficient, saving us administrative costs.”
BP started looking for a fleet management solution after its 1998 merger with Amoco and acquisitions of ARCO and Burmah Castrol in the following two years. BP’s shopping list included the ability to make faster and better decisions. Task Assistant was designed to provide timely and relevant information to each user at the point of the need, consolidating all relevant sources of information. This was seen as putting the communicating into communications, meaning that people who needed to know, could know, both quickly and efficiently.
BP stipulated, however, that the solution it was buying from Ulysses had to serve BP not BP the system. The oil company did not want a situation where highly trained staff were spending more time running the administration than the ship.
Task Assistant comes with its own documentation distribution and reporting. Thus new document releases and change requests are easily distributed to all staff, organised by their relevant task and role.

System shoulder the task
According to Ulysses: “New regulatory forms are integrated into Task Assistant and as much as possible of the necessary information, is computed automatically by the system, thus relieving seafarers of unnecessarily administrative burdens.”
The automation of information storage of course also reduces physical filing and delivers obvious savings on time and printing out hard copies. Indeed BP reckons that it is reducing the physical filing on board each of its vessels from an average of 26 to just six filing cabinets.
The information is also always up to date. Until it implemented its Task Assistant system, BP had done manual updates every six months, in part because of the limitations of printing off and distributing extremely bulky documentation. As explained by BP : “Now using electronic distribution methods, updates can be performed instantly, fleet wide, at any time. The ability to access information instantly over an entire fleet of vessels and to analyse it in any office, has given BP a substantial competitive edge. Potential problems can be identified quickly and risks to safety and the environment avoided, while maintaining profitability.”
BP also tailored Task Assistant to focus on the work and rest period requirements of international regulations STWC 95 and ILO 180. A joint working party was set up to take advice from the International Maritime Organisation and the Chamber of Shipping, which produced a simple solution which linked into Task Assistant.
In the view of Ulysses: “It is commonly accepted within shipping circles that up to 80 per cent of accidents and incidents are caused by human error. BP Shipping expects to see a reduction in this risk area as Task Assistant supports operations staff with easily accessible, up-to-date procedures related to the specific task in hand.”

Trouble-shooting
Fleet management systems come into their own when things go wrong. Star Information Systems includes modules to monitor guarantees and equipment specifications and even insurance. Task Assistant has a suite of such functions.
When a problem occurs, the number of idle, non-revenue days has to be minimised. The chartering manager, technical manager, superintendent, purchaser, master and chief engineer all need to work together to define the optimum solution.
The problem might indeed have not arisen in the first place, since the chartering manager, working with his colleagues through the software, could alert them to idle periods, which could be used effectively for essential repairs and maintenance.
Each manager has a full range of data. The chartering manager can review the choice of voyages and assess a vessel’s location and the idle days ahead against repair schedules. The superintendent meanwhile can check the spare parts inventory, can monitor with video, components such as stern tube seals and can approve any necessary requisitions, which will meanwhile have been prepared by the purchaser, from his or her version of the same data.

Technical nursemaid
The technical manager meanwhile, having identified the priority of repairs, such as a stern tube seal replacement, can communicate with the master and the superintendent on repair procedures, such as ballast plans. During downtime, the technical manager can also schedule other operations such as cargo system maintenance and tank inspections.
This officer will also have readily available the chief engineer’s regular work reports and can identify other repairs that might usefully be carried out while the stern tube seal is being replaced.
Task Assistant would then give the technical manager access to both the manufacturer’s guidance on renewing the stern tube seals and a history of previous replacements, including any problems that arose. This information can be passed on to the external repairs team, who are also likely to be linked into Task Assistant via local agents. Finally the completed work can be passed through check inspections and class surveys and the class status report viewed on the appropriate Web Site.
Fleet management systems are powerful tools, which over time will come to encapsulate the accumulated wisdom of many sea years. Dana’s famous Victorian autobiography, “Ten Years before the Mast” could probably be distilled today into “Ten Minutes before the terminal”.

Big managers take the software
International Tanker Management, the specialist tanker management arm of Barber Ships, with over 50 tankers, has chosen Task Assistant, while Star Information System’s Jan Kalland says that Barber has currently rolled out his firm’s software on some 30 of its non-oil tanker vessels.
Eurasia Ship Management, with some 50 vessels, including container, tanker, bulk, passenger and general trade, has also adopted Task Assistant.
Although his optimism is hardly surprising, Kalland does suspect that critical mass is not far off. “The first adopters have taken the risks and are reaping the benefits.
“Now we are waiting for the rest of the industry to move. I am sure that they will, as soon as they see that they are going to have to take this solution, because if they do not, their operations will not remain sustainable against those of their competitors who have made the investment.”

//Nigel Ash

Back to SSG 4, 21 February