Innovation and Sustainability in Shipbuilding: Floorganise’s Contribution to EcoShipYard
On June 12th and 13th, Our colleagues Gert Jan and Paulina from Floorganise attended the EcoShipYard General Assembly in Malta to present the progress made so far across several tasks of the EcoShipYard Project. Set against the sunny backdrop of the Mediterranean, the two-day event brought together all partners involved in one shared mission: making shipyards greener and smarter.
Understanding the EcoShipYard Project: Goals and Vision
Today, more than ever, sustainability is a key topic in the maritime sector. That’s why we’re proud to be part of EcoShipYard, a European project focused on greening the shipbuilding industry by reducing environmental impact and improving operational efficiency through digital innovation.
The project aims to:
- Develop digital tools to monitor and reduce CO₂ emissions, energy consumption, and non-operational waste;
- Facilitate a shift toward data-driven, circular, and transparent shipyards aligned with EU environmental goals.
EcoShipyard is about providing shipyard operators with an integrated, real-time view of performance and sustainability metrics, making it easier to identify opportunities for improvement
In the following sections, we’ll dive into the progress of each Task Floorganise is contributing to, with a closer look at how we’re helping shape a smarter, more sustainable future for shipbuilding.
Our Role in the EcoShipYard Project
Definition and provision of system services and information management
Floorganise is contributing to Work Package 4 (WP4) of the project, which focuses on creating a robust platform to integrate sustainability assessment tools across the shipbuilding lifecycle. Task 4.1 marked a crucial milestone in this journey by defining both the platform’s functional scope and the structure of the digital twin model.
In this phase, the team analyzed different sources of information, ranging from existing software components to shipyard models, work breakdown structures, planning tools, and inventories of materials and equipment. This analysis laid the groundwork for a system capable of supporting sustainability evaluations throughout a ship’s life cycle: from production and maintenance to end-of-life recycling.
Key outcomes of Task 4.1 include:
- Establishing the core IT platform as the project’s digital backbone.
- Defining a set of essential applications and connected data sources.
- Designing an open architecture for evaluating environmental impact, especially emissions across different ship lifecycle stages.
A significant focus was the Data Acquisition Service, developed in close alignment with the Data Management and Data Analytics Services. The initial work involved designing technical specifications and aligning them with the requirements of all involved stakeholders. The team aimed to ensure a flexible, real-time data model capable of delivering reliable and relevant information to all contributors.
Simultaneously, research was conducted into the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to explore how sensors, SCADA systems, and other data sources could be integrated. As a practical step, the team developed a prototype using a temperature and humidity sensor, which collected clean, filtered data and transmitted it to a local server through the platform’s API.
Later iterations of the prototype incorporated support for MQTT, a widely-used messaging protocol in IoT systems. This extension greatly enhanced the potential for interoperability with various sensors and devices used across shipyards.
This foundational work leads the way for deeper integration of real-time data and sustainability metrics, positioning the EcoShipyard platform as a key enabler of greener, data-driven decision-making in the maritime industry.
Client Dashboard
The development of the Client Dashboard is our contribution to the task 4.3 in which we are collaborating with Atlantec. Task 4.3 focuses on the development, configuration, and integration of dashboards and supporting applications. This work is grounded in data analytics and aims to identify improvement opportunities that can be translated into actionable steps within a structured PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) approach. The main activities under this task include:
- Embedding PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycles into the process to support continuous improvement in a streamlined and manageable way.
- Using an existing, customizable dashboard framework to ensure the solution meets the system’s specific needs.
- Adapting pre-existing applications so they integrate smoothly with the platform, maximizing the functionality of the dashboard.
The development of the Dashboard began with a user research phase, combining surveys and interviews to understand user needs and expectations. Based on the insights gathered, key functionalities were defined to support better environmental monitoring and decision-making in shipyards.
Users expressed a need to:
- Monitor the largest sources of emission and identify root causes.
- Track daily activities that affect environmental performance, such as rework, delays, and inneficient use of equipement or materials.
- Access predictive insights by analyzing past trends to foresee potential issues.
- View performance at both shipyard-wide and departamental levels.
- Set personalized indicators for emission goals to asses whether performance is improving, stable or worsening.
- Easily compare data across sectors within the same time frame.
Following the research, a conceptual design of the dashboard was created to visually translate these needs by prioritizing user experience over technical limitations at this stage. The design includes multiple dashboards and highlights environmental status trends (e.g., increasing, decreasing, or stable emissions). Stacked graphs were proposed to allow intuitive comparison of variables such as energy usage against planning or material use.
MES bridge: Integration of performance monitoring systems and 3rd party systems
In Task 4.4, Floorganise is leading the development of a bridge system that enables seamless integration between the shipyard’s performance monitoring tools and external third-party systems, such as MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) and shop floor data loggers. This integration is a crucial step toward enabling data-driven decision making and giving stakeholders a comprehensive view of operational performance across the yard.
The goal is double: first, to build a central hub where data from various sources can be gathered and analysed; and second, to create reference implementations that demonstrate how such integrations can be replicated efficiently in real-world shipyard environments
A key delivery of this task is the MES Bridge, a software component designed to connect Floor2Plan with existing platforms. Work includes defining the system architecture, establishing the software design principles for future connectors, and developing a proof of concept, which was already previewed at the GA meeting in June.
One of the biggest challenges in shipyard operations is the high cost of inefficiencies, especially when it comes to rework. It is estimated that rework or late-stage changes can account for up to 10% of total production costs, not to mention the additional energy and material consumption they entail. This not only affects profitability, but also worsens the environmental footprint.
By connecting Floor2Plan to the broader platform through the MES Bridge, we aim to enable more accurate planning and forecasting of future consumption, including CO₂ emissions, energy, and other materials. The ability to detect and address inefficiencies early, before they turn into costly rework, gives stakeholders a powerful tool to reduce waste, optimize resource use, and improve environmental performance. This is where Floor2Plan excels: by integrating real-time data, we can anticipate problems and support shipyards in making smarter, more sustainable decisions