The New Contract Centre of Wärtsilä Italy was inaugurated in Trieste, at the Bagnoli della Rosandra plant. It is a control room remotely accessible 24/7, reserved for Wärtsilä customer service operating in the Southern Europe and Africa area, tied to Wärtsilä by long-term agreements.
From this room – the seventh worldwide after Vasa, Ft. Lauderdale, Quito, Manaus, Dubai and Chennai – highly-specialised Wärtsilä staff are able to connect to the machine rooms of all marine and terrestrial installations in the region, providing assistance for the resolution of technical issues in the field quickly and efficiently, preventing the emergence of more critical issues through the analysis of data typical to the machine and optimising operational performance.
With the new Contract Centre, Wärtsilä will be even closer to its customers and will provide them with its expertise and its technical and managerial skills, reducing the response time and improving the quality of its technical assistance. All this is made possible by a suite of cutting-edge software installed on the engines that collects data (alarms, events, actions, operating parameters) and sends it to the Contract Centre in a live or delayed feed via GSM communications channels for terrestrial installations or satellite channels for marine installations.
"We at Wärtsilä strongly believe that computerisation is the fourth industrial revolution, we have been pioneers in this respect since 2001 with the introduction of this type of system on the market," stated Guido Barbazza, President & Managing Director of Wärtsilä Italy. "Thanks to the advanced technology that we use today, we can guarantee our customers the availability of very highly-skilled professional staff even in the remotest, furthest and most difficult to reach parts of the world."
In addition, as a demonstration of the high degree of computerisation which characterises Wärtsilä's products, this room will host the Virtual Service Engineer (VSE), one of the latest advances of the digital age, a headset that uses augmented reality technology to offer live audiovisual communications to installations located hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the base. Through audiovisual communication the service engineer on the ship or in the power plant can interact in real time with Wärtsilä experts in the Contract Centre who, seeing the same images that he/she sees, can guide him or her step by step in the service operations, as if both were in the same place, ensuring maximum efficiency and safety for the operations.
"We want to help our customers grow their business, by providing them with skills and digital technologies capable of ensuring a high value-added and unmatched service," said Emanuela Rusconi, Head of the Contract Centre of Trieste. "The world is changing. To be competitive in your field, decisions have to be taken ever more rapidly and with ever greater acumen and quality. Whether it is a cruise ship on the seas or an electricity power plant, our customers and markets need to be able to rely on the exchange of data in real time, to ensure full and continuous operation of their machinery, increase its efficiency and maximise its output and availability."
The optimisation of management, operation and maintenance, the anticipation of events, proactive analysis, service flexibility and return on investment are all key drivers that unite both Wärtsilä and its customers, and in sharing these goals Wärtsilä aims to ensure the growth of themselves and their customers.