MOL Releases 'Fleet Viewer' Application

Japanese marine transport company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) announced that MOL, Mitsui E&S Shipbuilding, and Weathernews Inc. jointly released "Fleet Viewer," as part I of MOL's "FOCUS" Project intended to enhance the collection and application of ship operation data.

Ensuring safe vessel operation, and in turn safeguarding the transport of people and cargo is the foundation of the ocean shipping industry.

For the most part, however, maintaining safety and addressing problems onboard have relied on the skills and experience of seafarers on the front lines, because ships travel such great distances, and while they could maintain radio or telephone contact with shoreside personnel, physical distance and telecommunications limitations meant they could not be "watched" from shore.

A similar situation would be a doctor at a local clinic telephoning a hospital for an advice on treating a patient.

The Fleet Viewer is designed to prevent problems, with the option of switching to "treatment" in case of a failure, and share know-how between the "hospital" on shore and the "clinic" far out at sea.

In other words, not only the crewmembers onboard while under way, but also ship management superintendents on land can observe, diagnose, and treat the ship's operating status if external help is required. It enables MOL to offer safer transport services to customers by sharing the knowledge gained by analyzing accumulated Big Data throughout the fleet via the FOCUS Project.

The Fleet Viewer collects nearly 6,000 items of sensing data at a uniquely high frequency (one-minute intervals), which allows it to determine the status of vessels, the operational status of all equipment, vessel position, ocean and weather information, and share all this among vessels and shore-based personnel, anywhere in the world.

The Fleet Viewer, which handles enormous data volume, also features a user-friendly interface. Users can not only instantly recognize the status of vessels, delve into data, and send push notifications, but also customize the content of the system. The customized content can be shared among them. The Fleet Viewer is an application that can continue to evolve along with its users' needs.

Vessel operation data is collected and stored on the cloud with part of ABLOG data. The accumulated data is used through the development of various applications to enhance safe operation and reduce environmental impact.

As the second step following Fleet Viewer application, slated to appear around October of this year, the project team plans to release an application having the capability to assess the degradation of vessel performance over time which is now difficult to do from shore.

The team also plans to sequentially develop and release various applications.

Through the FOCUS project, MOL continually strives to expand the development and adoption of applications that gather and apply ship operation data, promote trouble-free ship operation, and provide stress-free transport services.