Carnival Maritime, the Marine Service Unit of the Costa Group, and the Fraunhofer CML have set up a strategic partnership to implement the maritime research institute´s decision support system SCEDAS on the 27 vessels of Costa Crociere, AIDA Cruises and Costa Asia.

SCEDAS, which is already in use at container and bulk vessels around the world, uses mathematical optimisation techniques to assists planners to calculate detailed work schedules for every seaman. In daily shipping it is likely that original planning will be more or less changed by unpredictable events. To optimise these various parameters manually in real time is extremely difficult. Efficient scheduling algorithms address this fact by constantly updating the work schedule during the voyage.

The real work hours records of every crew member in combination with real-time voyage situations are considered in order to create better work schedules than the manually generated ones. The present planning tool is without an optimisation algorithm behind.

Due to the large number of influencing factors the reliable workforce planning and scheduling represents a complex planning problem in cruise market. Carnival Maritime will now incorporate SCEDAS in a new advanced version developed specifically for cruise market requirements. The transparency achieved regarding workloads has the additional benefit of identifying optimal time slots for planned and unplanned maintenance efforts.

Carnival Maritime project leader, Capt. Nicole Langosch, commented: “Our goal is to take workforce planning onboard our ships to a new level. To facilitate the work scheduling for our crews we will integrate maintenance tasks from our PMS-System within SCEDAS. Thereby we are able to intelligently mesh operational demands and maintenance management considering the individual needs of our seafarers.”

Fraunhofer CML’s head of department, Ole John, said: “We’ve experienced the benefits of mathematical optimisation first-hand and we are delighted to be working with Carnival Maritime, that knows the importance of pioneering approaches. Our experts have helped implement efficient, reliable and highly customised workforce solutions in maritime sector. Now, we’re eager to enable our partner in cruise market to realise an informed decision-making process and implementation of innovative work flows that SCEDAS can provide.”