Streamlining the Execution of Maritime Commissioning with a Digital Assistance System

Providing the best possible support to commissioning engineers is critical for efficient execution of commissioning and on-time delivery of a shipbuilding project. This paper contributes to current research on the digitization of maritime commissioning and builds on existing approaches to a digital twin. Based on an analysis of the execution process, this paper presents a human-centric digital assistance system that is designed to provide the commissioning engineers with an improved information supply and to increase situational awareness in the complex and error-prone ETO process. In addition, the system can be connected to the ship automation system via OPC UA to display, check, and document sensor values directly in the assistance system. Problems and rework items can be documented context-sensitively and with little effort and fed back into the digital twin. The automated documentation and continuous enrichment of the digital twin help reduce effort, make the commissioning process more transparent, and progress indications more resilient. The prototype implementation at three shipyards promises improvements in productivity and quality.