ABB and KONGSBERG announce digitalization collaboration on edge data collection

ABB Turbocharging and Kongsberg Digital have signed a cooperation agreement on edge data collection and ship engine performance analysis. The companies will work towards a common data infrastructure and accelerate the development of value-added digital applications and services.

The agreement will enable ABB Turbocharging to use Kongsberg Digital’s data infrastructure solution for vessels, Vessel Insight – which runs on Kongsberg Digital’s Kognifai ecosystem. It will be used as an additional data infrastructure service for ABB Turbocharging’s digital solutions. Such exchange of data between cloud platforms is fundamental to enabling remote diagnostics on vessel engines. The recent introduction of continuous performance evaluation functionality in ABB’s advisory software for engines, ABB Ability^TM Tekomar XPERT, allows timeseries engine data to be transferred between platforms.

“Partnerships between major players are key in bringing about high value digital solutions to the maritime sector at a lower cost and faster pace. With Kongsberg Digital and ABB Turbocharging working together to increase the value offering to customers, we can deliver an even more attractive return on investment to vessel owners and operators. We are excited about working together with ABB Turbocharging and our customers to accelerate their digitalization journey,” says Hege Skryseth, President of Kongsberg Digital.

ABB Turbocharging and Kongsberg Digital have a common interest in accelerating the adoption of digital technologies in a safe, reliable and sustainable manner with the aim of delivering solutions for a safer, smarter and greener maritime industry. The partnership will enable performance analysis of engines, through fully automated solutions supported by sensors, that will give transparency and confidence in data and can then be easily shared with other parties and OEMs to help generate more value. This translates into less workload for the crew.

“This collaboration will take our customers further, faster. Our goal is to empower ship owners and operators to extract the maximum value from their engine data. This co-operation will help to deliver the tools and insights into engine performance needed to make their vessel operations better, their fleet management more efficient and their businesses more profitable and sustainable. It is a simple and valuable choice for a next step towards operational transparency and the digitalization of shipping,” says Cristian Corotto, Vice President Digital Customer Solutions, ABB Turbocharging.

Vessel Insight is an out of the box solution to solve the ship-to-cloud data transmission and combined with Tekomar XPERT, ABB and KONGSBERG’s customers benefit from a fully automated engine performance diagnostics system. It is available anywhere, anytime.

Although both systems are fully independent and able to integrate with other data sources or share data with other parties, the package works seamlessly and comes tailor-made for each ship, applying the highest cyber security standards. The cooperation will focus on keeping projects as lean as possible and delivering results within short lead times.

As both ABB’s and KONGSBERG’s solutions have a strong market position in their respective areas, this partnership will provide a tremendous benefit to ship owners, -managers and -operators who are looking for a state-of-the-art implementation.

ABB has an industry-leading portfolio of digital solutions – ABB Ability™ brings together over four decades of industrial digital leadership, advanced connectivity and the latest digital technologies to create unparalleled customer value.

The agreement was signed 21 August 2020 and enters into effect immediately.