Aras, which provides the most powerful low-code platform with applications to design, build, and operate complex products, today announced that MacGregor, a leader in sustainable maritime cargo and load handling, utilized Aras Innovator® to further develop their 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, in which 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, creating the context to couple with performance data to further improve reliability predictions of equipment performance and enabling 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,” said 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. They were chosen as a prime example of a service which uses data analytics to help shipowners and operators develop more proactive and condition-based intelligent strategies for maintenance.