Royal Boskalis increases profits with proactive asset management

Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V. is a leading global services provider operating in the dredging, maritime infrastructure and maritime services sectors. Its clients include national, regional and local governments, port operators, international project developers, oil companies, mining companies and other contractors.

With 300 vessels worldwide operating in five continents, Boskalis needed a way to accurately track dredging costs for each project—including maintenance, fuel and inventory. Additionally, because sand and salt water can significantly shorten the life cycle of dredging and vessel equipment, company staff sought to strengthen its preventive maintenance program to improve asset reliability. In fact, without proper proof of maintenance, government agencies won’t provide vessel certification. And without certification, vessels can’t operate.

To help effectively track costs, maintain its fleet and meet certification requirements, Boskalis uses IBM Maximo® Asset Management software to manage preventive and corrective maintenance, processing about 40,000 work orders annually and managing nearly €30 million in inventory per vessel. An IBM Maximo software user since 1999, Boskalis is currently working with IBM Business Partner Stork Asset Management Solutions to upgrade to the latest software.

Greater transparency improves operations

With IBM Maximo Asset Management software, maintenance and plant engineers can implement company-wide maintenance schedules for all critical assets to help maximize availability and minimize the downtime of the vessels. Previously, maintenance, execution and reporting varied from vessel to vessel. For example, one vessel might overhaul its engine every 4,000 hours of run time while another vessel with the same engine might wait until 5,000 hours.

When problems arise, vessel chief engineers request spare parts directly in IBM Maximo software and the information is transmitted by satellite to the company’s head office, where a purchase order is created. Once filled, the parts are transported to the vessel in the optimum mode of transport—by air, sea or road. As the company expands its inventory tracking processes, vessels will be able to check if other vessels in the region have the required parts in stock, thereby greatly reducing costly lead time and freight charges. And because all purchase requests, whether for new parts or for fuel, require a project code, the company can easily manage costs for each client.

IBM Maximo Asset Management software is also helping Boskalis to implement best practices for inventory management. In the past, vessel captains and engineers often kept a large number of spare parts on board just in case they were needed. However, after sitting idle too long in the marine environment spare parts may become unusable and the extra weight restricts the amount of sand that can be dredged, increasing project time and costs. So maintenance staff is using IBM Maximo software to track the appropriate stock level for each vessel and automatically generate a purchase order when needed.

Increasing profitability

To gain even greater insight into its operations, the company also plans to add RFID tags to its more than 40,000 pipelines and use IBM Maximo software to help technical surveyors to quickly record the thickness of the pipeline and other key attributes to gain a comprehensive picture of each project from pipeline to vessel.

“IBM Maximo Asset Management helps us better plan and find the optimum balance between maintenance and operations,” says Marc Boer, manager, Plant & Management Support for Royal Boskalis Westminster. “This will help us increase uptime of our assets and reduce inventory costs to increase our profits.”

According to Boer, this commitment to effectively maintaining its assets hasn’t gone unnoticed. “The market is requiring comprehensive and proactive asset management, and with IBM Maximo Asset Management software we can meet this demand,” says Boer.

Solution components
Software

• IBM® Maximo® Asset Management

IBM Business Partner

• Stork Asset Management Solutions

For more information

To learn more about IBM Maximo Asset Management software, please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/tivoli

You can get even more out of Tivoli® software by participating in independently run Tivoli User Groups around the world. Learn about opportunities near you at: www.tivoli-ug.org

For more information on Stork Asset Management Solutions, visit: www.stork.com

For more information on Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., visit: www.boskalis.com

Additionally, financing solutions from IBM Global Financing can enable effective cash management, protection from technology obsolescence, improved total cost of ownership and return on investment. Also, our Global Asset Recovery Services help address environmental concerns with new, more energy-efficient solutions. For more information on IBM Global Financing, visit: ibm.com/financing