Improved condition monitoring ahoy

30 October, 2015

With the SKF Marine Condition Monitoring kit vessel engineers collect vibration data from critical auxiliary machinery, including cargo pumps, engine room fans and blowers, compressors, purifiers and electric motors as well as monitoring and evaluating vibration levels in accommodation area, as per MLC guidelines. The data is then downloaded and transmitted through the ship’s communication system to TCM’s headquarters, where a precisely detailed report is produced for each vessel on the current condition of the machinery.

The results are put into simple-to-use customised reports that help vessel engineers to prioritise their work schedule and thereby increase efficiency. The feedback can also generate a work order in the vessel’s maintenance management system, ensuring that each chief engineer is aware of all current issues when scheduling maintenance. This service aims at high availability of the TCM’s fleet by keeping their many vessels at sea and operating at maximum performance.

Advice and support

SKF provides advice and support during all stages of the project; from customising the instrument’s features in line with the customer’s needs and training the technical team to integrating the solution with ship’s maintenance management system (MMS). SKF engineers also offer after-sales support, providing expert 24-hour service to solve problems and help to maximise fleet availability.

In addition to supporting modern maintenance strategies, this solution also provides an easy way to check machine acceptance criteria after a machine repair in the workshop or onboard. Taking the step toward condition-based maintenance does not have to be a large investment.

Psaradakis concluded: “With the SKF Marine Condition Monitoring kit, we can identify and rectify problems at an early stage. In a short period, we managed to improve our machinery availability and reliability and reduce maintenance costs significantly. Overall, our investment cost proved to be very low, compared to the benefits we gain from implementing this solution.”

Tsakos Columbia Shipmanagement (‘TCM’) SA provides management, operation and crewing services for a diversified fleet of approximately 70 ships consisting of tanker, container and dry cargo ships with a capacity above 6.0 million deadweight tons (dwt).

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