As we see an internal and external economic environment of ocean
shipping have been changed greatly, we are in the transitory era of ship management from
international point of view. Ship management in broad sense has three functions: safe
operation, ship maintenance, and cost control. The ship manning with crew of many
nationalities is widespread, and it became natural to operate ships with Japanese officers
and foreign crew. The ship management division of the steamship company plays an important
role in maintaining and controling its operating fleet. Moreover, Japanese companies shift
their ship management function to foreign country, and new framework of desirable ship
management is endeavored to be established. The steamship company needs to aim at
integrated management of safety inspection, ship manning control, education and training,
supply of parts and tools, ship maintenance including on board maintenance.
Suffering from rise in yen exchange rate, ship operators seem no longer
to utilize ship repair business in Japan. The maintenance policy of Japanese ship
operators will determine to some extent a future of the Japanese ship repair industry, as
shipping industries in Japan are shifting ownership and management of ships to foreign
countries.
In order to reduce cost burden of the steamship company, the ship's
operators have gradually adopted foreign ship management company to supervise their fleet.
For this reason, the relation seems to collapse which has been long in good liaison
between Japanese steamship companies and ship repairers of Japan. Thus, the trend which
dry dock works are performed in foreign countries is getting stronger.
Reducing the number of ship's crew, nonspecializaion of deck department
and engineer department are also expedited. Recently high reliability/maintainability to
nautical instruments and marine engine are strongly demanded. It is also essential to take
command of precise operation and due maintenance of ship's operation. Construction of the
optimal maintenance system must never be delayed. A way of logistics seems to be the base
of this system, where logistics is an integrated strategy including field service which
consists of supply of raw materials, sites of factory and distribution, trucking, returned
articles, resumption, wastes, and supply of service parts. It is the field service that a
product (in this case, a ship) has to perform normally for planned span of its life cycle,
and is to hold preventive maintenance and repair to keep its function.
Basing on the concept of field service, this research deals with
various problems on OBM such as how many service crew are provided. Since steamship
companies in Japan so far adopted several maintenance frameworks for ship types,
respectively. The framework can be classified as follows:
(1) ship maintenance with crew's workloads before automation.
(2) ship maintenance with main machinery automated.
(3) maintenance supported by shore support groups in mother port.
(4) maintenance with service crew on board.
2. SHIP MAINTENANCE PROGRAM
We need to keep records of how much repair work is performed? We need
to examine actual failures taken place in bridge and main engine spaces in normal voyage.
MTBR (mean time between repairs) has to be measured at least as the first approximation.
If the length of MTBR is shorter than the time between successive dry dockings,
replacement/repair works should necessarily be generated. The strategic ship maintenance
is achieved according to the above principle.
FIG. 1 is an example of the cost performance level of a ship system. We
consider the ship operation models (1) 〜 (4) as follows; If more ship's crew is hired
and the full maintenance system of the ship is held effectively, annual ship's
availability can be highly attained even though ship's expenses are high. This status can
be expressed by point 4 of curve 4- 5-6. On the other way, ship's expenses can be lowered
without any additional maintenance even though the annual availability of ships is a
little low. This status can be expressed by point 6 of the same curve. It is not improved,
