AN APPROACH TO AN IMPROVED INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR SHIPBOARD PLANNED MAINTENANCE

In the current economic climate regular maintenance onboard ships is becoming increasingly important whilst personnel who can carry out such tasks efficiently are getting scarcer. For this reason information handling systems for shipboard planned maintenance management are receiving much attention at present. Systems currently in use, and developed so far, can be said to be successful to a certain extent. However, it is felt that they tackle the problem only partially. Information presented is not self-sufficient and it tends to be task-centred rather than user-centred. This paper addresses the problem by proposing a possible method of improving the current systems through total information handling. Existing systems are critically examined and their merits and shortcomings identified. A suggestion is then made to incorporate hypermedia technology in order to improve the capability of handling textual information of arbitrary length, structure and nature. This will also enable the system to cope with graphical information, thus effectively removing the necessity of referring to voluminous manuals. Finally, a simple pilot system based on the concept is discussed.