Health check for machinery and equipment

A Dutch company is offering health check and preventive maintenance for electric systems:


Could this be expanded to all machinery and equipment on ships, rigs and platforms, especially in the Offshore Oil & Gas industry??

(Free business idea courtesy our Dutch friends)

I suspect it’s similar to a extended warranty for your car. They’ll charge enough to offset any ‘liability’ they acually answer to. I reckon that would be a hard course to follow.

uhhh there are literally thousands of companies offering this type of service it’s used pretty much everywhere in industry. Insulation resistance testing, thermography, vibration analysis, oil sampling, etc. Absolutely nothing new here. Many ships do this all in house, it’s basic preventative maintenance.

This isnt new. We do meggering all the time. We also have a thermal camera. We send in oils samples all year long. On top of that we have yearly CMS testing done by an outside company which incorporates those tools as well as vibrarional analysis

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I don’t think anybody claim that preventive maintenance, or computerized PMS, is anything new,
What they claim is that they take over responsibility for keeping records of what services, repairs and renewals are required when and perform the work when the vessels are in port.

Obviously not practical for vessels in worldwide tramp trade, but totally feasible for OSVs, ferries and other vessels regularly visiting the same port(s) at short intervals.
(Anybody here ready to start such service in Port Fourchon?)

This is also a service that will be required when unmanned ships come into service in the not too far future.

Maybe check your googled articles. It’s says new service all over it including the title. Again outside companies keeping records and advising when work is needed is nothing new

I would say to some degree that is currently being done by the Caterpillar Dealer in the GOM and other places. They have the proprietary programs for the electronically controlled engines, the crew (to my knowledge) does not have access. The crew is effectively locked out of doing a number of tasks. Those that work on those vessels could probably illuminate the situation better.

Please correct me if I am in error.

Maybe you should check what I wrote:

Their service is what they claim is new. Whether it is so or not can of course be debated,

don’t need to check what you wrote booger. I’m talking about the article you posted. Nothing in that article is new

I’ve run into this as well and I think it’s BS. It’s not just engines either. Our AC plant is like this as well as our diesel chiller. Several times now we’ve had to call a technician to work on things that we couldn’t because the mfgs refuse to provide a password. Then the techs come out and don’t know the password or can’t access the level of programming needed to make the changes that the service order was created for. It’s frustrating.

I> Blockquote
You’re 99.999999% correct. The only exception I know of was around 2006. Cat had a bad run of injectors for the c280 engines. If you changed more than 3 injectors, you had to set the trim. Cat couldn’t keep up in a timely manner. There were threats of demurrage charges and we were issued Cat laptops and interfaces. The MMS panels are crew accessible with a code entry. The ECM is only accessible with the Cat laptop.

It is going the same way as with automobiles, there is less and less a “hobby mechanic” can do on modern cars of any brand.

With the “smart ships” coming into play the same will apply on ships and boats.
Engineers will not be made redundant immediately, but there will be less and less they can actually do with the machinery and equipment on board.

That is where a service like what is offered by Alewijnse will come in. Large corporations like Caterpillar, with a worldwide network of service stations, spare part supplies and agents may be able to keep it in-house, but smaller suppliers will need to form a network of contractors in all major ports/markets to perform the tasks.

This will happen faster than you may think, as the new IMO emission rules for ships is without a “grandfather” escape clause, which will result in quicker scrapping of old and obsolete ships, according to Fairplay:

You are so ignorant it’s pathetic. What the fuck do retrofitting scrubbers have to do with thermography and insulation resistance testing? Have you ever been on a ship/facility that does those operations in house? Have you ever assisted an outside contractor doing a thermography survey?

There is already a national network of contractors that commission and test electrical systems in the U.S. and abroad. It’s called NETA. Not to mention the hundreds of electrical contractors that offer electrical system commissioning and testing services who are not NETA members and don’t advertise because they already have plenty of customers. Not to mention all the companies who specialize in marine electrical only?

What are your electrical maintenance credentials? Are you a licensed electrician or electrical contractor? Electrical engineer? Have you ever even installed a light fixture?

That is a hilarious comment and I appreciate the laugh this morning.

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I may be ignorant about how to do thermography and megger testing and you may be an expert, but you are obviously not aware that there is a big wide world outside North America.

I was posting an article about a Dutch company that claims to offer a new service to the shipping industry, not making any statement about the validity of their claim, but inviting comments.

Next I posted an article from Fairplay about older ships being scrapped earlier due to the new IMO Sulphur cap. Here I did suggest that this MAY open possibilities for a service like what is offered by Alewijnse, not only for electric system but for all types of machinery and equipment, since less and less can be done by ships crew on modern equipment. (Free Business idea)

BTW; NETA appears to be operating only in USA /North America, although they have “International” tagged onto their full name. A common thing in America apparently. (Refr. “World Series” etc.)

Glad you had a good laugh, because it may not be long before you will be crying.
“Smart ships” with machinery being monitored from shore bases and/or by manufacturers is already a reality and unmanned ships are but a decade or so away:
https://worldmaritimenews.com/archives/234353/interview-how-will-seafarers-be-impacted-by-smart-ships/

I won’t be crying about a damn thing. I’ll be retired before then.

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http://www.tdeinc.com/services/preventive-maintenance/

When you are quoting someone you don’t alter the text to suit your opinion and agenda.

Besides, I did not say anything about there not being American companies offering all kinds of services to the marine industry. I invited comments on the statement from a Dutch company who claimed they offered a “new service”.

A new tool to avoid mistakes during routine maintenance on ships has been developed in Australia:
http://marinemaintenanceworldexpo.com/en/industry-news.php?release=01894d6f048493d2cacde3c579c315a3
Looking forward to comments.

More tools to help the Engineers has been developed in Japan:
http://marinemaintenanceworldexpo.com/en/industry-news.php?release=04048aeca2c0f5d84639358008ed2ae7