Jahresbericht 2006 - Biba - Universität Bremen

MarLife
Today the maritime industry in Germany
employs more than 220.000 people
and produces an added value of about
14 Billion Euros. These rates document the
high relevance of maritime industry as an
outstanding economic factor. Especially,
before the background of growing international
markets a further growth of this
industry is expected. Thus, the building of
ships as well as the operation of the ships
today has to be carried out with greatest
efficiency and effectiveness.
Because of legal appointments and
the rising demands of shipowners concerning
the profitability of their ships there is
a rising need of a general life cycle management
in maritime industry. Especially,
the attendance, servicing and repair of
ships require very high expenditure because
of an inadequate documentation
of the actual condition of the ship. If there
is an investment in a broad documentation
of generated data and documents
from the early beginning of a ship’s life
cycle there will be the effect of a strong
reduction of the shipowner’s costs for
operating, attendance, servicing and repair
of the ship. Thus, servicing cycles will
be harmonised, activities for attendance
will be carried out quickly and targeted,
damages will be avoided throughout
replacement of parts in time, repairing
will be made more quickly and cheaper,
and, finally, cost for the abruption of the
ship will be reduced. The MarLife Project
which is funded by the Federal Ministry
of Economics and Technology aims at
establishing the preconditions of information
technology to realise an extensive
documentation of generated data and
information.
The basis of the aimed general life
cycle management in maritime industry
is an adequate preparation of data: The
data basis of a continuous life cycle management
system is created during the
phases of design and building the ship.
Further more, a broad documentation of
servicing activities, attendance activities,
repairing or rebuilding in a so called
central life cycle management leading
system are necessary to have transparency
of the ship’s condition. Nowaday,
a system like this is not available in an
economic manageable manner. Additionally,
to the transparency of the ship’s
condition suppliers will get a wide range
of necessary information for carrying out
servicing or attendance activities or for
doing repairing. Thus, a higher availability
of the ships can be realised. The MarLife
Project works out solutions for the core
users – mainly shipowners – of life cycle
management systems, which result in decisive
advantages of rationing their fleet
and consequently effect in their rising
competitiveness on the global markets.
Heiko Gsell
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