Patrick Ryan, Senior Vice President of Global Engineering and Technology discusses the upcoming migration of ABS customers to the Freedom platform and the rollout of the Class Digital Twin in an exclusive interview with The Motorship at Posidonia 2022.
The rapid pace of digitalisation in oil and gas sector, and to a lesser extent in manufacturing, has tended to mean that the first wave of digitalisation experts entering the industry have sought to apply terrestrial models to the very different conditions of the marine market, or simply to marinise existing products and services.
Source: ABS
Patrick Ryan, Senior Vice President of Global Engineering and Technology
Patrick Ryan, Senior Vice President of Global Engineering and Technology at ABS, is not one of those people. He spent 21 years working in shipbuilding in positions of progressively greater responsibility before playing a key leadership role in the “digital transformation of the largest yard in the US”.
The experience of integrating digital processes into the design and construction of naval vessels in the US means that Ryan speaks with considerable authority about the possibilities that digitalisation offers both for the design, construction and operation of commercial vessels.
However, Ryan’s remit is much wider at ABS. As senior vice-president of engineering, his responsibilities involve everything from plan reviews to approvals in principle, with a footprint at 17 different engineering sites around the globe.
Ryan notes that the technology aspect of the role includes engineering developments as well as ABS’s Digital Class developments. Before discussing the Digital Class side aspects of his role, Ryan touched on the wider environment within the shipping industry, noting that digitalisation would act as an enabling technology to help the industry achieve its decarbonisation objectives.
A Paradigm Shift?
Ryan notes in passing that the pace of digital transformation is going to lead to greater changes in the industry over the next decade than in the preceding century.
Ryan believes that the initial innovations offered by digitalisation had focused on streamlining existing processes, such as inventory management systems, but subsequent innovations would help to create additional value for shipowners.
Ryan offered the example of predictive maintenance as an example of how customers can use streaming data to understand the health of a piece of rotating machinery. “Investment in predictive maintenance is a sophisticated approach to reducing operational expense through digitalisation.”
Ryan noted that the introduction of such solutions had also created new opportunities for classification societies to deliver services.
“Imagine I can take the same streaming data [being used for maintenance]… I could say [the equipment is] safe for the vessel, because I know this machine is operating within limits.” By using such streaming data, ABS could change the way it inspects machinery, making sure the machinery functions in different ways that coincidentally reduces its footprint for the vessels.
“But we’re still convincing ourselves as a class society, and flag states and all the downstream stakeholders that that machine is just as safe or maybe even safer than had we expected it because of the [availability of the] streaming data.”
However, Ryan was clear that such solutions were merely a secondary benefit of a digital transformation that shipowners were undertaking. “I’m not trying to convince shipowners to digitally transform themselves.” The benefits of digital transformation include operational efficiencies and changes to job requirements and responsibilities. It will also improve the industry’s attractiveness to young people entering the job market.
Freedom for All
Ryan noted that the classification society was also investing in its own processes and systems in order offer new solutions to its customers.
In 2019, ABS introduced its own operating system, Freedom, a sophisticated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to supports its service staff. Since the beginning of 2021, ABS has been connecting a product lifecycle management (PLM) system to its ERP system. The integration project will be completed by the middle of 2023, at which Freedom will be upgraded.
Ryan described the benefits of integrating a PLM into its ERP system by noting that PLM is optimised to manage change. “It will bring us the flexibility we need to create our virtual vessels and manage streaming data and simulation models and CAD models and all the [engineering technologies] that are new.”
As part of the upgrade, the classification society planned to migrate all of its customer data on to a new enhanced management system in 2023, when the new solution will be launched.
Ryan defended the Big Bang approach, noting that “We want a single workflow for our surveyors and our engineers… We want all owners to have the same look across their own fleet”.
The new system will drive ABS’ work management, ranging from the engineering plan, review and survey, but critically will also accommodate the owners’ own position. The new system will act like a portal through which shipowners can access highly detailed databases on their vessels. “We’re calling this the Class Digital Twin,” Ryan said.
The amount of insight that a shipowner will be able to access will depend upon the degree of digitalisation supported by his or her fleet.
For owners who do not provide any streaming data, and also do not have a Digital Twin, they will still see the same existing survey checklist that they have seen for the last 25 years. “The means by which the checklist is compiled will be completely different,” Ryan noted.
But for owners supplying streaming data, or with health monitoring, predictive maintenance and eventually the digital twin transformation itself, “then we’ll start to score your survey work plan differently, which could potentially reduce your survey footprint time.”
Ryan added that it “could potentially get you crediting where flag states agree, on equipment that will traditionally had to be attended in a different way”.
Looking further ahead, Ryan added that the ultimate objective of integrating vessel data would be to predict the performance of the vessel itself. The Motorship notes such a predictive compliance matrix (PCM) would have particular applicability to ABS’ environmental compliance solutions for shipowners. At present, the system is focused on providing an overview of a vessel and shipowners current fuel consumption, and consequently emissions profile.
The Motorship has covered ABS’ involvement in a number of vessel performance and voyage optimisation joint development projects, with European and Asian partners. A particular area of interest is the impact of ageing on machinery and overall vessel performance, which ABS is expected to include in its machinery module, which will be added to the Freedom system in 2023.
The Motorship notes Patrick Ryan’s team is also involved in a Hybrid LNG carrier project involving Wartsila and HZS in China which has integrated digital twin solutions into the optimisation process during the design phase. The project may be one of the first to leverage digitalisation models throughout the operational life of the vessel.
Third Party Collaboration
Ryan noted that ABS was taking a collaborative approach to incorporating third party data into the Freedom system. ABS has produced a Smart Guide that allows for any outside party doing data analytics, or machine learning on streaming data, to participate in the Class process.
This approach was consistent with ABS’s approach, which is to help customers manage change and offer the greatest flexibility for its clients throughout the digital transformation, rather than trying to produce the best machine learning algorithm or compete with OEMs to analyse machinery data.
“We don’t [necessarily] want the streaming data. And we don’t want to write our own algorithm on that piece of OEM equipment, we want the report from the OEM that says it’s good and we certify that process as outlined in the Smart Guide.”
Ryan cited the example of ABS decision to make public the API it used when integrating data from a consultancy subsidiary into its Freedom system. “We told lots of the competitors of Nautical Systems about it, and even supported a couple of them during development projects… so they could take their maintenance system information through our API into our system for class credit. We understand those dynamics very well.”
