Wärtsilä launches global Smart Support Centre

Photo: Wärtsilä

The service is aimed at improving asset uptime via remote access for customers of Wärtsilä’s Voyage business, significantly reducing the need for physical service attendance. Operational support is delivered via virtual service engineers, available around the clock.

Wärtsilä Voyage services benefitting from the new initiative include ship handling solutions, such as ECDIS and charts, simulation and training systems, and ship traffic control solutions. The Smart Support Centre remotely manages the health of systems, proactively warns if anything is deteriorating, performs software updates, and assists system users in all operative questions with fast response times.

Prior to launch, the service underwent testing in a pilot programme, conducted together with the Danish shipping company J. Lauritzen AS. Hans Elker Hansen, Marine QA, Vetting & Nautical Manager, Lauritzen, offered some insights, "Firstly, the crew is aware that 95% of all errors can be rectified remotely, and they don't need to arrange for a service engineer in the next port to solve the issue. This means that we have the equipment up and running at all times. Secondly, the use of e-mails to solve a technical or user-related problem is almost entirely eliminated, which avoids excessive communication."