Intelligent systems

Intelligent systems Boats are not normal vehicles, like cars. If your car breaks down all you have to do is pull over and call AAA and in a matter of hours you will be on your way with your car fixed or driving a rental. Boats are not normal living spaces, like our houses. Our houses are not assaulted every day by tremendously aggressive elements that will rust, degrade, infiltrate, and otherwise destroy everything by the action of wind, rain, UV rays, storms, etc. Boats are not normal storage spaces either. If you have something in your home that you don't really know where to keep, it will usually end up in the garage, or a garden shed or a storage facility, or a dumpster depending on the importance of the item. In a boat space is at a premium and everything has to be on the right place at the right time.

A modern boat must have systems that facilitate the management of three key areas: Its maintenance, supplies and spares, and operational information (log).

Maintenance management

Maintenance management Integrated maintenance log system, to not just register all work done on the boat, including the installations during construction and commissioning, but also to help schedule preventive maintenance and inspections recommended by the manufacturer, or predicated on experience. It keeps inventory of all the equipment installed, with their user manuals, purchase and installation dates, serial numbers, servicing protocols, etc.

This system must also permit the storage and search of all regulatory information relevant to the boat so when any equipment has to be serviced, replaced, or inspected, the system will give a report containing:

  • The equipment's technical sheet, description, model, manufacturer info, supplier contact.
  • Replacement info: compatibility lists, optional materials, alternative equipment.
  • MSDS: Material Safety Data Sheet to provide both workers and emergency personnel with the proper procedures for handling or working with a particular substance. They include information such as physical data (melting point, boiling point, flash point etc.), toxicity, health effects, first aid, reactivity, storage, disposal, protective equipment, and spill/leak procedures. These are of particular use if a spill or other accident occurs.

  • History of that item. Not the history of the equipment, but the history of every equipment ever installed at that position. It doesn't help to know that a seacock is fine today (good) while you ignore that it has been replaced several times during the last few months (bad).
  • Any recommendations, suggestions, and tips provided by: The designer of the boat, the builder of the boat, the specialists that designed the system where the equipment/material was installed, and any useful information we find about it on the internet, magazines, books, and technical publications.
  • The regulatory information we followed to choose and install that equipment.

A modern boat is a high quality, high precision system. Just like a spaceship it holds the lives of its occupants and has to support an extreme environment, while at the same time maintaining a very high level of operation and engineering quality. NASA wouldn't have a local mechanic from the car dealer, without any specific training, approach a spaceship to perform even the most trivial maintenance task. You certainly wouldn't let him get close to a Ferrary or a Bentley.

Now imagine that you are sailing the world when certain equipment fails and the only facility to fix anything around is the local mechanic at a marina or port. You can give him a report with all that information about the equipment, make sure he knows what are the rules, procedures, and regulations he has to follow. He will know what materials he can use, and if there is any special tip on how to do the job it is probably already there on the report. He will be a lot more prepared to do a good job with the report in hand than without it.

Inventory management

Inventory management Integrated inventory management system, to manage stocks of supplies, spare parts, and tools. The system must have a barcode reader to scan every item brought inside and register its location and expiration date, and also to account for them as they are consumed. It generates audit lists, and purchase lists based on current stock levels, length of next passage, expiration dates, crew numbers and weather forecast. It also generates a locker-by-locker inventory of contents to be posted inside the door of each locker, so one can know what is inside easily.

One decision we all face before leaving is when to stop stocking spare parts, which is like trying to predict how much will go wrong at sea while weighing such variables as storage space, faith in your equipment, and the availability of replacements. The integration between a Maintenance Management System and the Inventory Management System helps producing reports on needed spares for the next voyage, based on consumption, duration of the trip, and current inventory.




Operational information

Operational information Operation logs with the usual information entered on the navigation logs, plus info on the energy consumption of all equipments, energy generation of each power source, the way the boat was used on each segment and the environment conditions. That data will permit the fine-tuning of the systems to maximize the efficiency of the energy management.