Ship management software is the system in which a ship management company buys supplies and plans maintenance for a whole fleet of ships. It is a kind of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, the software in which a company keeps its orders, stock and accounts, built for the needs of ships. A ship manager is a company that runs ships on behalf of their owners. It hires the crew, keeps the ships in repair, buys their supplies and makes sure they meet the safety rules. Mumbai is one of the main centres of ship management, and India supplies a large share of the world's seafarers.
A ship has thousands of machines, from the main engine to the winches that lower the lifeboats. Each one must be serviced after a fixed number of running hours or a fixed number of months. Inspectors check that this was done. They come from the classification society, the body that certifies that a ship is safe to sail, and from the governments of the ports the ship visits. So the software holds a planned maintenance system: a list of every machine, its service schedule and the record of every job done on it.
Consider a ship manager in Mumbai that runs 40 bulk carriers, ships that carry loose cargo such as coal, grain or iron ore. On one ship, the fuel pump of the main engine has run 7,800 hours, and its service is due at 8,000. The software warns the ship's chief engineer and the office ten days ahead. The engineer checks the spare parts on board and finds that one seal kit is missing. He raises a requisition, a request to buy the part, in the ship's copy of the system. The request reaches the office over the ship's maritime communications link. A purchase executive in Mumbai asks three suppliers at the next port, Singapore, for a quote. She orders the cheapest kit that can be delivered on board when the ship arrives. After the service, the engineer records the job, and the record is ready for the next inspection.
The same software keeps the crew's records, the running cost of each ship and the bills that the manager sends to each owner. It also reads the voyage plan from voyage optimisation, so that the office knows when the ship will reach each port and can deliver supplies there.
Because the software connects each ship's computers to the shore, that connection must be protected. The page on maritime cyber security explains how. Ship management software belongs with the other tools of ocean freight and customs, but it is about the ship, not the cargo.