Digital Ship - September 2010
About six years ago, North American vessel operator Kinder Morgan began its first steps into the introduction of electronic reporting from its vessels. Today the company has expanded its use of the technology to incorporate a range of business processes – enjoying great efficiencies as a result. Robert Fry, Kinder Morgan, told Digital Ship about the benefits of digital documents.
Modern shipping is placing an ever-increasing range of demands on vessel crews. Commercial pressures and fierce competition have pushed companies to operate as quickly and efficiently as possible, while budgetary considerations have squeezed crew numbers to reduce the headcount on today's ships.
The modern mariner is often faced with the responsibility for a growing number of tasks, and with less and less time to complete them. In such a situation technology can make a huge difference in performing those duties, providing tools that can help to remove as many of these burdens as possible and allowing those at sea to concentrate on their most important core tasks.
One area where technology can assist in automating of onboard operation is in electronic reporting.
The preparation of paperwork is often an unnecessarily time-consuming task, and in modern business has, to a great extent, been replaced by the use of digital documents, linked to databases and business processes that can automatically provide information that might otherwise need to be manually entered by a relatively expensive office worker.
Companies in the maritime market have often been slow to automate many of these processes, content with their current way of working based on untold years of experience – however, this is a mentality that is becoming harder to maintain as internal and external demands for information require the generation of more reports, more data, and more frequent communication than ever before.
Kinder Morgan, a publicly-held transporter of refined petroleum products in North America, recognised that a similar evolution in its need for information was changing the way it was doing business, and embarked on a project to automate the wealth of data within its organisation, as Robert Fry, director of operations for Kinder Morgan Ship Channel Services (KMSCS), recalls.
“We began in 2004, with an office customer billing and operational information system,” he told us.
“This information came from daily boat logs that were written down and manually collected from the boats once per week.”
“In 2007, our next step was to integrate electronic forms on the boats. We started with the daily boat logs that are sent in electronically each day from the boats directly into the office electronic forms system. We then began thinking what other forms could be added.”
Technology trials
KMSCS began to look for some external help in expanding its use of digital documentation, and began a trial programme with US company, Skymira, a provider of remote information technology, to introduce a new electronic forms system that could be integrated into the workflow aboard its ships.
Skymira's Electronic Forms can be used to transfer existing paper forms into identical electronic PDF or web browser forms. These forms can be viewed and downloaded via a secure website, or the data can be imported into an existing database.
The PDF forms can be viewed within a web browser or the standard Adobe Reader application, freely available for download from the internet, and the user can type the required information directly into the PDF form on their screen.
Having already had experience working with companies in the shipping industry, the company had also optimised the system for use in low-bandwidth environments, as Roy Lund, Skymira, explains.
“During transmission of the forms only the entered data is sent via the communications system, and not the form itself, via the satellite or cellular phone networks utilised aboard the vessel,” he told us. “Bandwidth is not an issue.”
“Some of the applications currently being used by maritime companies operating with the systems include management of work orders, delivery tickets and bills of lading, and control of regular vessel operations such as daily logs, pre-arrival checklists, and dock/customer notifications.”
Other applications for personnel, safety and training information can also be integrated, managing items such as time sheets, which can be sent electronically to reduce errors and increase efficiency in the payroll process, or health and safety information such as safety meetings notes, injury reports and crew member training forms.
Since its first look at the technology a little over two years ago, KMSCS has now installed the Skymira system on nine inland push boats. The installation process involved was reasonably straightforward, as Mr Fry recounts.
“The installation process on the boats included PCs, other associated hardware and cellular modems with GPS capabilities,“ he said.
“Because of the areas we travel we use cellular data modems with GPS capabilities. We track our boats with Skymira GPS tracking in the office.”
The changeover was also helped by the fact that since the system replicates the forms already used by the company, training was not really required following the move to the new technology.
Electronic processes
Today, KMSCS has expanded its use of electronic documentation to encompass a wide variety of operational areas.
“We now have forms for grocery orders, supply orders, payroll, daily boat inspections, safety audits, vessel maintenance work orders, customer specific inspections and more,” said Mr Fry.
The system is used to transfer information on daily activity to assist in customer billing, maintenance issues like the monitoring of engine hours, oil levels, fuel levels and other vessel checklist items, and the distribution of information from safety meetings, among others.
All of this information is now available on shore in real time, which KMSCS says can increase the support available to those onboard from shore-side offices.
“The value is in the speed of the information received in the office,” said Mr Fry.
“The boat crew is still using about the same amount of time and effort but the speed and availability to those requiring the information onshore is very valuable.”
One particular area where Mr Fry notes that this has been of commercial benefit has been in managing payments, both in customer billing and remuneration to ships' staff.
“Prior to installing Skymira we billed customers once per week or twice a month,” he said. “Today we can create invoices daily.”
“By receiving payroll information electronically it is processed immediately, eliminating sending someone to each boat to collect it.”
“We used to delay pay day for five days from the end of the pay period to allow time for manual collection of hand-written forms from each vessel. With electronic submission we can pay the day after the end of the payroll period.”
When asked if this had led to noticeable overall improvements in operational efficiency, Mr Fry was unequivocal. “Absolutely,” he said. “The discipline it imposes by shortening the time it takes for the information to be available in the office [is a real benefit].”
“For example, the Captain can’t wait until the end of a crew change to fill out the form as the office is expecting it the next day. Also, corrections of forms are done right away and are easier to make as the Captain doesn’t have to remember something that happened a week ago.”
Forms like the USCG 2692 (casualty reporting form for the US Coast Guard) are available right away, which is important to the Coast Guard. Customer billing, payroll, boat supplies, groceries, boat maintenance work orders where a request comes in at 2 am and is ready for the boat at 7 am – all more efficient.”
Regulatory compliance
Regulatory reporting in particular is one area which could help to push electronic documentation into the maritime market with demands for data from authorities around the world increasing all the time – demands that cannot be ignored.
Skymira notes that its solutions have been especially helpful in ensuring compliance with US EPA (environmental protection agency) mandated requirements for logging and inspection record keeping for overboard discharge in the maritime industry, and can help with compliance in other areas such as security declarations, or suspicious activity reports.
KMSCS itself has seen its own burden in this regard growing over the past few years.
“While not onerous yet, it has increased,” said Mr Fry.
“Regulatory requirements will become more onerous in the future. It is about 10 per cent now, but in three to five years new Subchapter M regulatory reporting (for US taxes) could well become 50 percent, or greater, of our total digital transfer requirements.”
Aside from the advantages for regulatory compliance, with so many business processes now integrated through the use of electronic forms and benefiting from greater efficiency, KMSCS estimates that it should be able to make a return on its investment in the technology within a couple of years of operation.
“With the installation of PCs and associated hardware for the first time on the boats the estimate would be twenty-four months, but that is an estimate,” said Mr Fry.
“That estimate includes payback on the cost of the PCs themselves. If the PCs had already been in place, it would have been much less.”
One thing that the company is certain of is that it will continue to expand its use of this type of technology, and will soon start to look at things like training, responsible carrier programme documentation, and any other processes that could benefit from increased access to information.
“Once you get electronic forms installed and begin using, you ask: What’s next?” said Mr Fry. “After that you just continue building on it.”
DS - Digital Ship September 2010 page 42
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