Use of the chief engineers experience to prioritize operational tasks in the ship engine room

The frequent causes of ships’ detentions by port authorities are abnormalities of marine power plant functioning. Each extended ship lay time in port results in a waste of ship operating time thus costs rise to ship owners. This is connected with improper marine power plant management. In order to avoid this, a ship engineer should have at his disposal computer aided system supporting him in the managing of the marine power plant. One element of the decision making process in managing the marine engine room is to determine how important is each of the tasks which the operators have to do. This estimation is the base to choose the most important tasks and make optimal schedule with them using AHP method. Based on practice, a hierarchic structure of factors influencing a tasks validity in the engine room operating process was made. Next a preliminary questionnaire was conducted, which put questions to the experts as chief engineers next. This enabled to define numerical values of suitable coefficients influencing on the validity of operating tasks, show results of calculations in form of mileage parameters of engine as a function of crank angle.