Final Report Summary - BOMA (Boat Management)
Executive Summary:
After years of focusing on products quality, pleasure boat builders have realized the need to emphasize the after-sales market and their customers’ demands for products that are both easy in upkeep and environmentally friendly. Concepts of Product Lifecycle Management and Intelligent Maintenance can be applied to fulfil such requirements and solutions are available in comparable sectors such as the automotive or ship-building areas.
However, these concepts have yet to be applied to the boat sector. BOMA intends to close that gap for the benefit of Europe’s generally small and medium boat building enterprises. BOMA is driven by the commercial needs of these SMEs and aims to increase their international competitively by establishing Intelligent Products and Service Extensions for the marine sector. BOMA will benefit not only the boat manufacturers and their immediate customers, but the entire value network consisting boat designers, ship yards, charterers, component suppliers and marinas. The boat market cannot be underestimated – with pleasure marine industry revenues in Europe totalling in excess of €23 billion, BOMA aims to support a very significant market for innovative European SMEs. The BOMA consortium is driven by leading European boat manufacturers supported by leading research and industrial partners in the fields of Product Lifecycle Management and Intelligent Products. BOMA will develop services addressing Intelligent Maintenance, Sustainability, Upgrades and the used boat market. These services improve all phases of the pleasure boat lifecycle – from enhancing design processes with knowledge from the entire lifecycle, through the usage phase applying Intelligent Maintenance concepts and technologies to improve safety, reliability and quality to the end-of-life phase by empowering sustainability issues such as increased reusability, refurbishing and reuse of used boats and components parts as well as ultimate retirement.
Project Context and Objectives:
The potential of the concepts behind the product-service solutions and intelligent products has never been applied to the leisure boat industry which has all the characteristics necessary to obtain great advantages from it. In fact boats are complex products, often in small series, designed or made to order and even one off, maintenance has a key role for safety and ownership costs, the product can have a very long usage life and finally it’s a market where sustainability and green issues are a potential key advantage for competition.
This Intelligent Product/Service concept has a significant potential within the marine sector, that can be achieved by employing existing technologies (RFID, Tele-control Systems, GSM and over Internet communication) on a standardized, open platform for Intelligent Products, allowing processes and systems with standardized communication interfaces and information representation.
European Boat Producers, who are mainly SMEs, need to find advantages against other regions producers to maintain and increase their presence in the market; moreover, since competition is going global which until now has been local, new tools to manage boats and their information, maintenance, update and end of life are needed.
After years of focusing on product quality, boat builders have realized the need to emphasize the aftersales market and the users’ perceptions of optimized / no-hassle ownership and environmentally friendly boats.
BOMA is a commercially driven project, which can support SMEs in this transition toward a global market as well as support them into the competition against other regions; BOMA aims to achieve the goal of having an Intelligent Product extended with services, defining the best ways to:
• gather, store, handle and transfer data,
• transform data into information and knowledge,
• use the Internet of Things to work seamlessly and secure,
Finally providing new services (predictive maintenance, materials re-use, etc) and new potential green aspects to the marine sector.
BOMA addresses some challenges that rise up in the beginning of life, middle of life and end of life of the product.
In particular:
• during the design and production phase it is important to track changes, needs and choices, to evaluate the Life Cycle Cost and Life Cycle Assessment and track the production process of the boat;
• during the middle of life phase of a boat, BOMA helps in the scheduling and tracking of the maintenance, monitoring the boat performances and providing up-to-date information ;
• within the end of life phase, BOMA will be able to provide data feed back to the producer.
Project Results:
During the first nine months of the projects, the work performed comprised:
• the analysis of the AS-IS situation of business and processes and the definition of the needs and requirements of each SME;
• a first iteration of business models and KPIs definition, following the results achieved in the analysis of the current situation;
• the consolidation of the requirements collected merged with the potential business models generated the relevant requirements for supporting the IT-infrastructure;
• pilot cases have been defined;
• tools and methods for the implementation of the BOMA infrastructure have been identified, as well as the first draft of the system architecture;
• the mock-up of the concept has been realized using a clickable interface of the software solution;
• according to the needs and the requirements of the SMEs, the mock up has been tested by all the partners;
• a first experiment of Universal Marine Gateway has been developed in order to capture data in the Middle Of Life of the boat. The development is supported by the Eco-Boat MoL Project.
The main results achieved can be explained by the Milestones number 1 and 2 of the projects:
• MS1:AS-IS Analysis, which comprises the detailed business process analysis of all the SMEs Boat Producers;
• MS2: Mock up Prototype, that has been prepared, explained, tested and approved by all the SMEs.
While minor results have been achieved during the course of the project, related to each Work package:
• WP1: AS-IS analysis of the production process of each SMEPs; first definition of the business models, that will naturally evolve during the project.
• WP2: the requirements have been consolidated, the state of the art on existing technologies has been discussed and the system architecture has been developed.
• WP3: Universal Marine Gateway experiment integrated to the middleware;
• WP4: the concept mock- up has been prepared, tested and approved according to the needs and requirements of each SMEPs.
• WP5: the first results of the project have been presented at an academic and national level through events and conferences.
During the second part of the Project (fifteen months), the work performed comprised:
• Update of the Business Models and KPIs defined during the first months of the Project;
• Development of the algorithms required within the BOMA Platform;
• Refinement of the system architecture which comprises four components: the PLM software, the semantic mediator for the integration of the Universal Marine Gateway, the communication for on-board data exchange and the sensors tailored on each pilot case;
• Development, test and implementation of the Universal Marine Gateway for both “on boat” and production with the Weather Data Interface for the semantic mediator;
• Connection of the devices (RFid/barcode reader, telediagnostic system) to the BOMA architecture ;
• Decision Support System development and integration with the middleware and the Lifecycle Management Server;
• Preliminary and beta test carried out with the purpose to release the final version of the BOMA system;
• Training material sent to the SMEs prior to the Deployment within Boat Producers’ business. Schedule and deploy of the BOMA system;
• Dissemination as well as exploitation activities have been performed from both academic and commercial sides.
The main results achieved can be explained by the Milestones from number 3 to 9 of the project:
• MS3,4: Business models and KPIs. Definition and revision of the business models
• MS5: Alfa Version. First version of the BOMA system, with the integration of all the components
• MS6: Beta Version. Second version of the system, tailored to the defined pilot cases for the SMEs
• MS7: Gold Version. Final version of the BOMA system with the components running and installed at the premises of each SME
• MS8: Business Test and Evaluation Report. After the deploy, draw up of the business impact relate to the implementation of the whole system.
• MS9: Exploitation and Marketing Strategy. Definition of a draft and final plan for the dissemination and exploitation of the results achieved
While minor results have been achieved during the course of the project, related to each Work package:
• WP1: refinement of the BOMA business models in collaboration with each SME
• WP2: definition of the pilot cases, algorithms and implementation of the whole BOMA architecture
• WP3: implementation of the infrastructure: middleware, lifecycle management server, boat web application, decision support system and integration of all the components. Finally, the preparation of the training material and the deployment
• WP4: Test and evaluation of the BOMA system, starting from a preliminary version and ending with the final implemented at SMEs’ premises
• WP5: dissemination and exploitation activities performed from both academic and commercial sides
Potential Impact:
The expected final results of the project are strictly related to the objectives of it. In particular eight Project Results can be listed and associated to the connected Project Objectives. The results are interesting for the boat designers and builders, ship yards, charter management companies and subsystem manufacturers. All these stakeholders can obtain great advantages from the implementation of the BOMA system, as confirmed during the first test of the Platform.
The results are described as follows:
• Analysis of the SMEs business and processes. The result is useful in order to define the AS-IS situation and map the TO-BE with the improvements achievable through the implementation of the BOMA system. It a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• BOMA-based Business Model: based on the first result, new business models will be developed in order to leverage on the possibilities offered by BOMA. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• Measurements and KPI for Business Model: according to the second result, the new business models require new ways of measure their performances. It is also relevant to empirically examine their impacts and results, since they can be significantly different from what expected. It is necessary to control the business, correctly manage it and react properly to unforeseen issues. For this reason a set of KPIs will be developed and used. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• Exploitation and Marketing Strategy: this result is connected to the definition of the possible strategy in order to achieve the best exploitation and marketing results. It includes the dissemination and the promotion of the project results in coordination with industry demonstrators, industrial users, conferences and journals, supporting materials, public website, events and exhibitions. The post Project exploitation will be prepared by supporting activities and efforts oriented to the definition of current practices, policies and technologies within the PLM and the investigation into the economic benefits. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• Algorithms: this result is focused on the definition of algorithms for the different lifecycle phases of the boat. In particular, algorithms to evaluate the Life Cycle Cost and Impact will be defined, as well as diagnostic and predictive maintenance algorithms. The result is related to the objectives that comprise the evaluation and implementation of LCC and LCA and the improvement of maintenance.
• Deployed BOMA specific customization of the “i-Like” platform: it is related to all the objectives of the project. It includes the customization of the platform for all the Boat Producers according to their needs and requirements which are the results of the analysis of their businesses and processes.
• Testing: the test phase is one of the most important results, since it permits a better understanding between boat manufacturers , RTDs and programmers. The feedback from the different test phases within the Project allows quality assurance, software potential, right design and functionalities of the BOMA components. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• Ad Hoc Training Material: this result is responsible for the development of the training material (e.g. manuals, videos, walkthroughs, wikis, FAQs) of the BOMA solution to be used in marketing, dissemination and exploitation activities. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
The expected BOMA impacts on the business are the improved customizability of the product, the creation of new services of the users, the continuous improvements of the design of the product, the easier management of the sales and the second hand market, the faster reaction on upcoming regulations concerning documentary evidence of origin of components and parts.
The Project has a direct impact on production costs and revenues of the producers and in the same way on the sale price and after-sale for the users. In fact there will be a reduction of the costs during the design and production phases because of the saving due to the automated management of the production, the improved production management methods that the introduction of new tools will enable. The savings has been esteemed in 5-8% on the boat industrial costs.
With more information available in real time and a close connection between product and producer, the user can benefit from these with less waste of time and resources in case of problems, requests and emergencies. The user will benefit from reduced usage costs and higher second hand value.
Dissemination and exploitation activities
Dissemination and exploitation activities performed are described in the paragraphs below.
1. Website
The project website http://www.boma-project.eu/ will serve as one of the main dissemination channels. It includes a download area for public deliverables as well as pictures and videos about the implementations.
The new Home page is divided in three different sections:
• About us: it includes a description of the project and a picture of the team.
• Vision & Mission: it contains new description about vision and mission to help the users.
• Implementations: some videos about implementation with a brief description are available.
Another section of the website is Solutions, which describes BOMA’s challenges in order to provide information about Beginning, Middle and End of life challenges.
A description of the six work packages is included in the section Project structure.
The list of the deliverables submitted along the project life is available in the section Deliverables.
The new section Partners contains a direct link to each one of them, in order to facilitate a direct contact with them.
Then section Media contains some news (available in subsection Press) and pictures of project meetings and implementations (in Photos subsection).
2. Promotional Materials
A flyer and a poster regarding BOMA have been created during the project life.
3. Social Media
BOMA plans to exploit social networking and media opportunities to promote its visibility and results. In particular a public Facebook and Linkedin pages will be created and regularly updated with the news related to the dissemination and exploitation activities.
4. Publications and events
BOMA research results have been disseminated worldwide through public activities such as events and conferences where the project was presented and publications.
- Events:
• Presentation of the project to the Open Group, 31st October and 1st November 2013, Barcelona by Lion Benjamins
• Marine Equipment Trade Show, November 20th, 2013, Amsterdam: presentation at the ICOMIA workshop on New Technologies, by Bjørnar Henriksen.
• Norwegian Research Council's - annual two-day production seminar, January 10th, 2013, Sundvolden, Norway
• Arena Leisure Boat's "Workshop Reputation", June 11th, 2013,
• IoT Week 2013 – Internet of Things technologies, Innovation and Businesses, Helsinki, 17-20 June 2013 by Lion Benjamins
- Publications:
• Wuest, T.; Hribernik, K., Thoben, K.D. Digital Representations of Intelligent Products: Product Avatar 2.0 In: Abramovici, M.; Stark, E. (Eds.): Lecture Notes in Production Engineering, Proceedings of the 23rd CIRP Design Conference - Smart Product Engineering, Bochum, Germany, pp. 675-684, 11-13 März 2013.
• Wuest, T.; Hribernik, K.; Thoben, K.-D. Can a Product Have a Facebook? A New Perspective on Product Avatars in Product Lifecycle Management In: Rivest, L.; Bouraz, A.; Louhichi, B. (Eds.): Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM 2012), Product Lifecycle Management: Towards Knowledge-Rich Enterprises, Montréal, Canada, ISBN 978-2-921145-82-4 , pp. 400-410, 9-11 July 2012.
• Hribernik, K.; Wuest, T.; Thoben, K.-D. A Product Avatar for Leisure Boats Owners: Concept, Development and Findings In: Product Lifecycle Management for Society. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. p. 560-569.
• Hribernik, K., Wuest, T., Thoben, K.-D. Towards Product Avatars Representing Middle-of-Life Information for Improving Design, Development and Manufacturing Processes. In: Digital Product and Process Development Systems, Proceeding of the IFIP TC 5 International Conference, NEW PROLAMAT 2013, Dresden, Germany, pp. 85-96, October 2013.
- Trade Fairs:
After the end of the project it is expected that BOMA will be presented at specific ‘professional’ trade fairs. Similarly it is expected that SME partners will want to inform their clients of the BOMA content in their products.
In the following the major shows in 2014 until the end of the year:
• 21/09-23/09 – Southampton
• 17/09-22/09 – La Rochelle
• 20/09-28/09 – Friedrichshafen
• 24/09-28/09 – Barcelona
• 02/10-07/10 – Genoa
• 18/10-26/10 – Athens
• 30/10-13/11 – Fort Lauderdale
• 25/10-02/11 – Hamburg
• 18/11-20/11 – METS Amsterdam
5. Standardization
Standardization is a key issue for BOMA. We intend to ensure that future adoption of BOMA results will be facilitated through the application of and contribution to relevant technical standards. The main channel for standardization will be The Open Group. However, we will continue to sensitive to other standardization opportunities for the whole duration of the project.
Collaboration with The Open Group
The Open Group is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through open IT standards. Within The Open Group, the Quantum Lifecycle Management (QLM) Work Group aims to deliver standards to support an open, secure and trustworthy infrastructure for the exchange and processing of lifecycle management information throughout all lifecycle phases. The formation of The Open Group QLM Work Group is a direct result of the European Project PROMISE (FP6-IST project No. IST-2004-507100), which ended in July 2008, and has now been running since October 2010 with the involvement of several major IT enterprises.
The Open Group QLM Work Group is currently chaired by David Potter. Both he and Jacopo Cassina of Holonix are founder members of the work group. Therefore BOMA has a very strong individual representation and active commitment to its success and results.
The Open Group comprises several working groups and forums. To further enhance the management of product lifecycle information, the QLM Work Group is currently cooperating with:
• the Semantic Interoperability (UDEF) Work Group
• The Open Group Trusted Technology Forum (OTTF)
• the Security Forum
BOMA benefits from the involvement in The Open Group both by exploiting QLM standards and also influencing their future development, so as to ensure a standardized basis for interoperable lifecycle data. This is relevant to BOMA as the project has chosen QLM (Quantum Lifecycle Management) as its underlying product information communication platform.
The Open Group Collaboration Plan
BOMA collaborated with The Open Group on relevant BoL and MoL topics by participating in the workshops and conferences. BOMA took into account QLM as a standardized way to exchange and communicate lifecycle data, so it will be also a common basis for interacting with other lifecycle management data.
BOMA intends to contribute to the on-going work in the QLM group and improve the state-of-the-art on data interoperability, ID resolution, and interfaces. This will facilitate wider adoption and use of the BOMA prototype after the conclusion of the project.
BOMA continued the involvement in the following activities with The Open Group throughout the lifetime of the project:
1. Participation in the regular conferences held by The Open Group both as a source of input to the project but also as a dissemination channel for the results of BOMA. Important face-to-face working sessions are held by all work groups and forums during these conferences,
2. Exploitation of and contribution to the work of the QLM Work Group.
3. Application and extension of the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) in order to uniquely identify information items and enhance semantic interoperability.
6. Exploitation
This section presents the evolving individual PUBLIC exploitation plan of each of the BOMA project partners.
POLIMI has improved its knowledge on PLM systems and their potential as well as acquired new knowledge on the specific use of these systems into the marine industry. This knowledge will be presented within public activities such as conferences and shared among all the research entities connected to the university. Furthermore, it will be evaluated the use of the new concepts developed as well as the BOMA technologies within other projects either into marine industry or other industries.
Hydrolift is currently using those modules of the BOMA Platform that allow to manage the range of product and already installed the prototype version of the Universal Marine Gateway. The company is testing more in details the potential of this device and intends to install it on each boat produced. Furthermore, Hydrolift is very interested also in the i-Captain solution (reported in paragraph 2.7) , in particular sees many benefits in the integration with the BOMA system. For these reasons, the industrialization of the Marine Gateway has been already started and Hydrolift started to share and promote the BOMA and i-Captain concepts within the Norwegian Marine Industry .
Marine Center decided to install the module of the BOMA Platform that allows to manage the maintenance activities. Furthermore, the company showed a great interest into the i-Captain solution and the possibility to integrate it with the BOMA system. However, the BOMA tools are still not used due to the crisis that struggle the whole marine industry and in particular the company business. Marine Center will continue to share and promote both the BOMA and i-Captain innovative concepts within the marine industry.
Fiart Mare is currently using the BOMA system for managing production and logistic processes. A prototype version of the Universal Marine Gateway has been installed during the go-live but the company is still evaluating the opportunity to finally use it.
Karnic is currently using the BOMA system for managing production processes. A prototype version of the “Production” Universal Marine Gateway has been installed into its facilities during the go-live. The BOMA system has been fully integrated with the production quality management system already used by the company.
Marex is currently using the whole BOMA system. A prototype version of both the “Production” Universal Marine Gateway and the “on-board” Universal Marine Gateway has been installed during the go-live. The BOMA system has been fully integrated with the ERP system already used by the company.
Holonix has already exploited the technologies developed within the project. In particular:
• i-Captain (www.i-captain.com) has been originated by some ideas and business opportunities highlighted through BOMA Lifecycle, but it has been developed outside BOMA Project and already launched on the market.
• i-Captain (www.i-captain.com) is the personal Boat Lifecycle Management system. It provides the boat-owners a personal “product/service lifecycle knowledge” platform, where the boat is represented through a “product avatar”, a digital representation of it in the virtual world, so to enable the boaters to have the complete lifecycle history and interact with it through ICT. Furthermore, i-captain and BOMA platform are fully interoperable enabling the data and information exchange in a simple and fast way.
• i-Like Boat has been improved and customized according to the marine industry needs and requirements. This solution is ready to be delivered to the market.
BIBA has taken several benefits from the BOMA project. The Universal Marine Gateway has been developped and customized for the marine industry. However, the Marine Gateway has many others applications. In fact the “standard” use of this telediagnostic device has been already selected for the field data gathering in many other projects, from machine tools case to the white goods application. For this reason, several configurations of the Marine Gateway have been defined and the industrialization process of the prototype has been started.
Finally BIBA decided to install the BOMA Platform as a demonstrator within its facilities in order to show the results achieved by the project.
SINTEF is project manager and research partner in several projects where the concepts and underlying thoughts of the BOMA system is an important part. This is especially true for the ECO-boat MOL project where the hardware solutions related to data collection and transfer is the focus. Currently 10 test-prototypes are under development in this project. SINTEF has delivered services and advices within process development mainly within:
• More fact-based process improvement in production. Based on data from the BOMA system
• Improved design-processes and product quality from improved data and facts
• New approaches for customer collaboration based on new technologies and systems such as BOMA. A big survey is being carried out to capture the boat customers view and opinion on different ways the customer could be integrated in fact-/data collection
BOMA has been an important premise for two new Norwegian research projects co-funded by the Norwegian Research Council. One of them (Marin Platform) focus on data for modularization of the structural elements of boats, while the other project (Innovative KRAFT) uses BOMA – approaches to capture different types of strategic data (KPI-based) into innovation processes in mechanical engineering.
List of Websites:
www.boma-project.eu
Contact: Jacopo Cassina (jacopo.cassina@holonix.it)
After years of focusing on products quality, pleasure boat builders have realized the need to emphasize the after-sales market and their customers’ demands for products that are both easy in upkeep and environmentally friendly. Concepts of Product Lifecycle Management and Intelligent Maintenance can be applied to fulfil such requirements and solutions are available in comparable sectors such as the automotive or ship-building areas.
However, these concepts have yet to be applied to the boat sector. BOMA intends to close that gap for the benefit of Europe’s generally small and medium boat building enterprises. BOMA is driven by the commercial needs of these SMEs and aims to increase their international competitively by establishing Intelligent Products and Service Extensions for the marine sector. BOMA will benefit not only the boat manufacturers and their immediate customers, but the entire value network consisting boat designers, ship yards, charterers, component suppliers and marinas. The boat market cannot be underestimated – with pleasure marine industry revenues in Europe totalling in excess of €23 billion, BOMA aims to support a very significant market for innovative European SMEs. The BOMA consortium is driven by leading European boat manufacturers supported by leading research and industrial partners in the fields of Product Lifecycle Management and Intelligent Products. BOMA will develop services addressing Intelligent Maintenance, Sustainability, Upgrades and the used boat market. These services improve all phases of the pleasure boat lifecycle – from enhancing design processes with knowledge from the entire lifecycle, through the usage phase applying Intelligent Maintenance concepts and technologies to improve safety, reliability and quality to the end-of-life phase by empowering sustainability issues such as increased reusability, refurbishing and reuse of used boats and components parts as well as ultimate retirement.
Project Context and Objectives:
The potential of the concepts behind the product-service solutions and intelligent products has never been applied to the leisure boat industry which has all the characteristics necessary to obtain great advantages from it. In fact boats are complex products, often in small series, designed or made to order and even one off, maintenance has a key role for safety and ownership costs, the product can have a very long usage life and finally it’s a market where sustainability and green issues are a potential key advantage for competition.
This Intelligent Product/Service concept has a significant potential within the marine sector, that can be achieved by employing existing technologies (RFID, Tele-control Systems, GSM and over Internet communication) on a standardized, open platform for Intelligent Products, allowing processes and systems with standardized communication interfaces and information representation.
European Boat Producers, who are mainly SMEs, need to find advantages against other regions producers to maintain and increase their presence in the market; moreover, since competition is going global which until now has been local, new tools to manage boats and their information, maintenance, update and end of life are needed.
After years of focusing on product quality, boat builders have realized the need to emphasize the aftersales market and the users’ perceptions of optimized / no-hassle ownership and environmentally friendly boats.
BOMA is a commercially driven project, which can support SMEs in this transition toward a global market as well as support them into the competition against other regions; BOMA aims to achieve the goal of having an Intelligent Product extended with services, defining the best ways to:
• gather, store, handle and transfer data,
• transform data into information and knowledge,
• use the Internet of Things to work seamlessly and secure,
Finally providing new services (predictive maintenance, materials re-use, etc) and new potential green aspects to the marine sector.
BOMA addresses some challenges that rise up in the beginning of life, middle of life and end of life of the product.
In particular:
• during the design and production phase it is important to track changes, needs and choices, to evaluate the Life Cycle Cost and Life Cycle Assessment and track the production process of the boat;
• during the middle of life phase of a boat, BOMA helps in the scheduling and tracking of the maintenance, monitoring the boat performances and providing up-to-date information ;
• within the end of life phase, BOMA will be able to provide data feed back to the producer.
Project Results:
During the first nine months of the projects, the work performed comprised:
• the analysis of the AS-IS situation of business and processes and the definition of the needs and requirements of each SME;
• a first iteration of business models and KPIs definition, following the results achieved in the analysis of the current situation;
• the consolidation of the requirements collected merged with the potential business models generated the relevant requirements for supporting the IT-infrastructure;
• pilot cases have been defined;
• tools and methods for the implementation of the BOMA infrastructure have been identified, as well as the first draft of the system architecture;
• the mock-up of the concept has been realized using a clickable interface of the software solution;
• according to the needs and the requirements of the SMEs, the mock up has been tested by all the partners;
• a first experiment of Universal Marine Gateway has been developed in order to capture data in the Middle Of Life of the boat. The development is supported by the Eco-Boat MoL Project.
The main results achieved can be explained by the Milestones number 1 and 2 of the projects:
• MS1:AS-IS Analysis, which comprises the detailed business process analysis of all the SMEs Boat Producers;
• MS2: Mock up Prototype, that has been prepared, explained, tested and approved by all the SMEs.
While minor results have been achieved during the course of the project, related to each Work package:
• WP1: AS-IS analysis of the production process of each SMEPs; first definition of the business models, that will naturally evolve during the project.
• WP2: the requirements have been consolidated, the state of the art on existing technologies has been discussed and the system architecture has been developed.
• WP3: Universal Marine Gateway experiment integrated to the middleware;
• WP4: the concept mock- up has been prepared, tested and approved according to the needs and requirements of each SMEPs.
• WP5: the first results of the project have been presented at an academic and national level through events and conferences.
During the second part of the Project (fifteen months), the work performed comprised:
• Update of the Business Models and KPIs defined during the first months of the Project;
• Development of the algorithms required within the BOMA Platform;
• Refinement of the system architecture which comprises four components: the PLM software, the semantic mediator for the integration of the Universal Marine Gateway, the communication for on-board data exchange and the sensors tailored on each pilot case;
• Development, test and implementation of the Universal Marine Gateway for both “on boat” and production with the Weather Data Interface for the semantic mediator;
• Connection of the devices (RFid/barcode reader, telediagnostic system) to the BOMA architecture ;
• Decision Support System development and integration with the middleware and the Lifecycle Management Server;
• Preliminary and beta test carried out with the purpose to release the final version of the BOMA system;
• Training material sent to the SMEs prior to the Deployment within Boat Producers’ business. Schedule and deploy of the BOMA system;
• Dissemination as well as exploitation activities have been performed from both academic and commercial sides.
The main results achieved can be explained by the Milestones from number 3 to 9 of the project:
• MS3,4: Business models and KPIs. Definition and revision of the business models
• MS5: Alfa Version. First version of the BOMA system, with the integration of all the components
• MS6: Beta Version. Second version of the system, tailored to the defined pilot cases for the SMEs
• MS7: Gold Version. Final version of the BOMA system with the components running and installed at the premises of each SME
• MS8: Business Test and Evaluation Report. After the deploy, draw up of the business impact relate to the implementation of the whole system.
• MS9: Exploitation and Marketing Strategy. Definition of a draft and final plan for the dissemination and exploitation of the results achieved
While minor results have been achieved during the course of the project, related to each Work package:
• WP1: refinement of the BOMA business models in collaboration with each SME
• WP2: definition of the pilot cases, algorithms and implementation of the whole BOMA architecture
• WP3: implementation of the infrastructure: middleware, lifecycle management server, boat web application, decision support system and integration of all the components. Finally, the preparation of the training material and the deployment
• WP4: Test and evaluation of the BOMA system, starting from a preliminary version and ending with the final implemented at SMEs’ premises
• WP5: dissemination and exploitation activities performed from both academic and commercial sides
Potential Impact:
The expected final results of the project are strictly related to the objectives of it. In particular eight Project Results can be listed and associated to the connected Project Objectives. The results are interesting for the boat designers and builders, ship yards, charter management companies and subsystem manufacturers. All these stakeholders can obtain great advantages from the implementation of the BOMA system, as confirmed during the first test of the Platform.
The results are described as follows:
• Analysis of the SMEs business and processes. The result is useful in order to define the AS-IS situation and map the TO-BE with the improvements achievable through the implementation of the BOMA system. It a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• BOMA-based Business Model: based on the first result, new business models will be developed in order to leverage on the possibilities offered by BOMA. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• Measurements and KPI for Business Model: according to the second result, the new business models require new ways of measure their performances. It is also relevant to empirically examine their impacts and results, since they can be significantly different from what expected. It is necessary to control the business, correctly manage it and react properly to unforeseen issues. For this reason a set of KPIs will be developed and used. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• Exploitation and Marketing Strategy: this result is connected to the definition of the possible strategy in order to achieve the best exploitation and marketing results. It includes the dissemination and the promotion of the project results in coordination with industry demonstrators, industrial users, conferences and journals, supporting materials, public website, events and exhibitions. The post Project exploitation will be prepared by supporting activities and efforts oriented to the definition of current practices, policies and technologies within the PLM and the investigation into the economic benefits. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• Algorithms: this result is focused on the definition of algorithms for the different lifecycle phases of the boat. In particular, algorithms to evaluate the Life Cycle Cost and Impact will be defined, as well as diagnostic and predictive maintenance algorithms. The result is related to the objectives that comprise the evaluation and implementation of LCC and LCA and the improvement of maintenance.
• Deployed BOMA specific customization of the “i-Like” platform: it is related to all the objectives of the project. It includes the customization of the platform for all the Boat Producers according to their needs and requirements which are the results of the analysis of their businesses and processes.
• Testing: the test phase is one of the most important results, since it permits a better understanding between boat manufacturers , RTDs and programmers. The feedback from the different test phases within the Project allows quality assurance, software potential, right design and functionalities of the BOMA components. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
• Ad Hoc Training Material: this result is responsible for the development of the training material (e.g. manuals, videos, walkthroughs, wikis, FAQs) of the BOMA solution to be used in marketing, dissemination and exploitation activities. It is a result connected to all the objectives to be achieved during the whole Project.
The expected BOMA impacts on the business are the improved customizability of the product, the creation of new services of the users, the continuous improvements of the design of the product, the easier management of the sales and the second hand market, the faster reaction on upcoming regulations concerning documentary evidence of origin of components and parts.
The Project has a direct impact on production costs and revenues of the producers and in the same way on the sale price and after-sale for the users. In fact there will be a reduction of the costs during the design and production phases because of the saving due to the automated management of the production, the improved production management methods that the introduction of new tools will enable. The savings has been esteemed in 5-8% on the boat industrial costs.
With more information available in real time and a close connection between product and producer, the user can benefit from these with less waste of time and resources in case of problems, requests and emergencies. The user will benefit from reduced usage costs and higher second hand value.
Dissemination and exploitation activities
Dissemination and exploitation activities performed are described in the paragraphs below.
1. Website
The project website http://www.boma-project.eu/ will serve as one of the main dissemination channels. It includes a download area for public deliverables as well as pictures and videos about the implementations.
The new Home page is divided in three different sections:
• About us: it includes a description of the project and a picture of the team.
• Vision & Mission: it contains new description about vision and mission to help the users.
• Implementations: some videos about implementation with a brief description are available.
Another section of the website is Solutions, which describes BOMA’s challenges in order to provide information about Beginning, Middle and End of life challenges.
A description of the six work packages is included in the section Project structure.
The list of the deliverables submitted along the project life is available in the section Deliverables.
The new section Partners contains a direct link to each one of them, in order to facilitate a direct contact with them.
Then section Media contains some news (available in subsection Press) and pictures of project meetings and implementations (in Photos subsection).
2. Promotional Materials
A flyer and a poster regarding BOMA have been created during the project life.
3. Social Media
BOMA plans to exploit social networking and media opportunities to promote its visibility and results. In particular a public Facebook and Linkedin pages will be created and regularly updated with the news related to the dissemination and exploitation activities.
4. Publications and events
BOMA research results have been disseminated worldwide through public activities such as events and conferences where the project was presented and publications.
- Events:
• Presentation of the project to the Open Group, 31st October and 1st November 2013, Barcelona by Lion Benjamins
• Marine Equipment Trade Show, November 20th, 2013, Amsterdam: presentation at the ICOMIA workshop on New Technologies, by Bjørnar Henriksen.
• Norwegian Research Council's - annual two-day production seminar, January 10th, 2013, Sundvolden, Norway
• Arena Leisure Boat's "Workshop Reputation", June 11th, 2013,
• IoT Week 2013 – Internet of Things technologies, Innovation and Businesses, Helsinki, 17-20 June 2013 by Lion Benjamins
- Publications:
• Wuest, T.; Hribernik, K., Thoben, K.D. Digital Representations of Intelligent Products: Product Avatar 2.0 In: Abramovici, M.; Stark, E. (Eds.): Lecture Notes in Production Engineering, Proceedings of the 23rd CIRP Design Conference - Smart Product Engineering, Bochum, Germany, pp. 675-684, 11-13 März 2013.
• Wuest, T.; Hribernik, K.; Thoben, K.-D. Can a Product Have a Facebook? A New Perspective on Product Avatars in Product Lifecycle Management In: Rivest, L.; Bouraz, A.; Louhichi, B. (Eds.): Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM 2012), Product Lifecycle Management: Towards Knowledge-Rich Enterprises, Montréal, Canada, ISBN 978-2-921145-82-4 , pp. 400-410, 9-11 July 2012.
• Hribernik, K.; Wuest, T.; Thoben, K.-D. A Product Avatar for Leisure Boats Owners: Concept, Development and Findings In: Product Lifecycle Management for Society. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. p. 560-569.
• Hribernik, K., Wuest, T., Thoben, K.-D. Towards Product Avatars Representing Middle-of-Life Information for Improving Design, Development and Manufacturing Processes. In: Digital Product and Process Development Systems, Proceeding of the IFIP TC 5 International Conference, NEW PROLAMAT 2013, Dresden, Germany, pp. 85-96, October 2013.
- Trade Fairs:
After the end of the project it is expected that BOMA will be presented at specific ‘professional’ trade fairs. Similarly it is expected that SME partners will want to inform their clients of the BOMA content in their products.
In the following the major shows in 2014 until the end of the year:
• 21/09-23/09 – Southampton
• 17/09-22/09 – La Rochelle
• 20/09-28/09 – Friedrichshafen
• 24/09-28/09 – Barcelona
• 02/10-07/10 – Genoa
• 18/10-26/10 – Athens
• 30/10-13/11 – Fort Lauderdale
• 25/10-02/11 – Hamburg
• 18/11-20/11 – METS Amsterdam
5. Standardization
Standardization is a key issue for BOMA. We intend to ensure that future adoption of BOMA results will be facilitated through the application of and contribution to relevant technical standards. The main channel for standardization will be The Open Group. However, we will continue to sensitive to other standardization opportunities for the whole duration of the project.
Collaboration with The Open Group
The Open Group is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through open IT standards. Within The Open Group, the Quantum Lifecycle Management (QLM) Work Group aims to deliver standards to support an open, secure and trustworthy infrastructure for the exchange and processing of lifecycle management information throughout all lifecycle phases. The formation of The Open Group QLM Work Group is a direct result of the European Project PROMISE (FP6-IST project No. IST-2004-507100), which ended in July 2008, and has now been running since October 2010 with the involvement of several major IT enterprises.
The Open Group QLM Work Group is currently chaired by David Potter. Both he and Jacopo Cassina of Holonix are founder members of the work group. Therefore BOMA has a very strong individual representation and active commitment to its success and results.
The Open Group comprises several working groups and forums. To further enhance the management of product lifecycle information, the QLM Work Group is currently cooperating with:
• the Semantic Interoperability (UDEF) Work Group
• The Open Group Trusted Technology Forum (OTTF)
• the Security Forum
BOMA benefits from the involvement in The Open Group both by exploiting QLM standards and also influencing their future development, so as to ensure a standardized basis for interoperable lifecycle data. This is relevant to BOMA as the project has chosen QLM (Quantum Lifecycle Management) as its underlying product information communication platform.
The Open Group Collaboration Plan
BOMA collaborated with The Open Group on relevant BoL and MoL topics by participating in the workshops and conferences. BOMA took into account QLM as a standardized way to exchange and communicate lifecycle data, so it will be also a common basis for interacting with other lifecycle management data.
BOMA intends to contribute to the on-going work in the QLM group and improve the state-of-the-art on data interoperability, ID resolution, and interfaces. This will facilitate wider adoption and use of the BOMA prototype after the conclusion of the project.
BOMA continued the involvement in the following activities with The Open Group throughout the lifetime of the project:
1. Participation in the regular conferences held by The Open Group both as a source of input to the project but also as a dissemination channel for the results of BOMA. Important face-to-face working sessions are held by all work groups and forums during these conferences,
2. Exploitation of and contribution to the work of the QLM Work Group.
3. Application and extension of the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) in order to uniquely identify information items and enhance semantic interoperability.
6. Exploitation
This section presents the evolving individual PUBLIC exploitation plan of each of the BOMA project partners.
POLIMI has improved its knowledge on PLM systems and their potential as well as acquired new knowledge on the specific use of these systems into the marine industry. This knowledge will be presented within public activities such as conferences and shared among all the research entities connected to the university. Furthermore, it will be evaluated the use of the new concepts developed as well as the BOMA technologies within other projects either into marine industry or other industries.
Hydrolift is currently using those modules of the BOMA Platform that allow to manage the range of product and already installed the prototype version of the Universal Marine Gateway. The company is testing more in details the potential of this device and intends to install it on each boat produced. Furthermore, Hydrolift is very interested also in the i-Captain solution (reported in paragraph 2.7) , in particular sees many benefits in the integration with the BOMA system. For these reasons, the industrialization of the Marine Gateway has been already started and Hydrolift started to share and promote the BOMA and i-Captain concepts within the Norwegian Marine Industry .
Marine Center decided to install the module of the BOMA Platform that allows to manage the maintenance activities. Furthermore, the company showed a great interest into the i-Captain solution and the possibility to integrate it with the BOMA system. However, the BOMA tools are still not used due to the crisis that struggle the whole marine industry and in particular the company business. Marine Center will continue to share and promote both the BOMA and i-Captain innovative concepts within the marine industry.
Fiart Mare is currently using the BOMA system for managing production and logistic processes. A prototype version of the Universal Marine Gateway has been installed during the go-live but the company is still evaluating the opportunity to finally use it.
Karnic is currently using the BOMA system for managing production processes. A prototype version of the “Production” Universal Marine Gateway has been installed into its facilities during the go-live. The BOMA system has been fully integrated with the production quality management system already used by the company.
Marex is currently using the whole BOMA system. A prototype version of both the “Production” Universal Marine Gateway and the “on-board” Universal Marine Gateway has been installed during the go-live. The BOMA system has been fully integrated with the ERP system already used by the company.
Holonix has already exploited the technologies developed within the project. In particular:
• i-Captain (www.i-captain.com) has been originated by some ideas and business opportunities highlighted through BOMA Lifecycle, but it has been developed outside BOMA Project and already launched on the market.
• i-Captain (www.i-captain.com) is the personal Boat Lifecycle Management system. It provides the boat-owners a personal “product/service lifecycle knowledge” platform, where the boat is represented through a “product avatar”, a digital representation of it in the virtual world, so to enable the boaters to have the complete lifecycle history and interact with it through ICT. Furthermore, i-captain and BOMA platform are fully interoperable enabling the data and information exchange in a simple and fast way.
• i-Like Boat has been improved and customized according to the marine industry needs and requirements. This solution is ready to be delivered to the market.
BIBA has taken several benefits from the BOMA project. The Universal Marine Gateway has been developped and customized for the marine industry. However, the Marine Gateway has many others applications. In fact the “standard” use of this telediagnostic device has been already selected for the field data gathering in many other projects, from machine tools case to the white goods application. For this reason, several configurations of the Marine Gateway have been defined and the industrialization process of the prototype has been started.
Finally BIBA decided to install the BOMA Platform as a demonstrator within its facilities in order to show the results achieved by the project.
SINTEF is project manager and research partner in several projects where the concepts and underlying thoughts of the BOMA system is an important part. This is especially true for the ECO-boat MOL project where the hardware solutions related to data collection and transfer is the focus. Currently 10 test-prototypes are under development in this project. SINTEF has delivered services and advices within process development mainly within:
• More fact-based process improvement in production. Based on data from the BOMA system
• Improved design-processes and product quality from improved data and facts
• New approaches for customer collaboration based on new technologies and systems such as BOMA. A big survey is being carried out to capture the boat customers view and opinion on different ways the customer could be integrated in fact-/data collection
BOMA has been an important premise for two new Norwegian research projects co-funded by the Norwegian Research Council. One of them (Marin Platform) focus on data for modularization of the structural elements of boats, while the other project (Innovative KRAFT) uses BOMA – approaches to capture different types of strategic data (KPI-based) into innovation processes in mechanical engineering.
List of Websites:
www.boma-project.eu
Contact: Jacopo Cassina (jacopo.cassina@holonix.it)