MaSeLMa

MaSelMa (Integrated Maintenance and Service Logistics Concepts for Maritime Assets)

In the maritime sector, service logistics support and maintenance of systems constitute a significant proportion of the exploitation costs. This is due to, on the one hand, the complexity and high capital value of the assets used in this sector and, on the other, the highly variable and mostly severe operating conditions encountered by vessels and their subsystems. Add to the equation the fact that these assets are often operating in remote locations around the world and that unplanned maintenance entails major effort and is consequently very costly. This demonstrates that it is the difficultly in predicting demand that drives up the cost of service logistics in the maritime sector.

The present project focuses on developing innovative concepts to improve the predictability of maintenance and the demand for service logistics. It is also concerned with the development of smart concepts for service logistics optimization, supply chain coordination and cooperation. This is how the project aims to improve service logistics efficiency for maritime assets. Research has been divided across three work packages. The first WP aims to improve maintenance forecasting (i.e. prevent failures / reduce unnecessary maintenance). WP 2 focuses on the design of service logistics to generate optimum maintenance plans, with a specification of resources and materials requirements. And finally, WP 3 aims to improve and extend cooperation for service logistics and supply chain management within and across different companies.

It is expected that the project results will facilitate a significant reduction in the total cost of ownership for asset owners and provide the OEMs / system integrators and service providers with opportunities for new business. From a scientific perspective, the innovative approach of integrating the fields of maintenance, service logistics and supply chain cooperation is expected to have an unprecedented impact.

Finally, through implementing an extensive valorization program, it is expected that the scientific results of this project will be available for application and implementation among the participating companies in the short term. To this end, base-lines studies, experimental pilot projects and case studies will take place within the companies and great efforts will be made to disseminate results.