Aras Innovator Enables OnWatch Scout, an Advanced Monitoring Solution, at MacGregor

Provides real-time insights, increased utility, and advanced data control for vessel maintenance

Published: Monday, April 24, 2023 - 12:00

(Aras: Andover, MA)-- Aras, which provides the most powerful low-code platform with applications to design, build, and operate complex products, announced that MacGregor, a leader in sustainable maritime cargo and load handling, used Aras Innovator to further develop its OnWatch Scout, a condition-based and predictive maintenance service. OnWatch Scout unites performance data from essential equipment aboard a ship and provides real-time condition and predictive monitoring information to the crew.

OnWatch Scout was developed by MacGregor as a step in the company’s digital services offerings. Here, service engineering knowledge is digitalized to empower customers by putting information at their fingertips. This information enables the identification of potential problems aboard a vessel and fix them in real time, reducing downtime and transportation delays.

Using Aras Innovator coupled with the Aras Digital Twin Core application, MacGregor took the initial concept of OnWatch Scout forward and developed additional functionality that would effortlessly create a digital twin configuration of a vessel, thus creating the context to couple with performance data to further improve reliability predictions of equipment performance and enable timely maintenance planning. The combined capabilities create a prescriptive maintenance solution that alerts the technical team when equipment needs attention and provides step-by-step recommendations on how to address the issue at hand.

“Our idea was to go a step further by not just offering predictive maintenance but also prescriptive maintenance capabilities,” says Bhavik Thakker, director for digital solutions at MacGregor. “One of the key features of OnWatch Scout is having all relevant data at hand, with context, and we are able to efficiently create and manage this data with Aras Innovator as our backbone.”

MacGregor has used the Aras platform as a key step in increasing the maturity of the company’s equipment data management. It acts as the single source of truth for documents, including manuals, step-by-step instructions, and spare parts documentation.

In 2022, MacGregor received the SMART4SEA Technology Award for the development of OnWatch Scout. MacGregor was chosen as a prime example of a service that uses data analytics to help shipowners and operators develop more proactive and condition-based intelligent strategies for maintenance. Download this case study to learn more about how Aras Innovator enabled OnWatch Scout, an award-winning advanced monitoring solution, at MacGregor.

About The Author

Quality Digest

For 40 years Quality Digest has been the go-to source for all things quality. Our newsletter, Quality Digest, shares expert commentary and relevant industry resources to assist our readers in their quest for continuous improvement. Our website includes every column and article from the newsletter since May 2009 as well as back issues of Quality Digest magazine to August 1995. We are committed to promoting a view wherein quality is not a niche, but an integral part of every phase of manufacturing and services.