An Ergonomic Study on Regular Staff of Ocean-Going Vessel

Abstract

Labor cost is now the greatest burden to the shipping industry in this country. Rapidly growing fleet of carriers flying "flags of convenience" tells us that strain. Only solution is to minimize the crew size by introducing new systems of ship operation. In this paper we firstly examined the existing system in view of man-machine hybrid control. Queueing Theory is employed for the purpose. We assume two categories of new systems of ship operation for further consideration, i.e., "less-manned" ship and "unmanned" ship. Less-manned ship does not essentially differ from the contemporary one but with a crew size as small as practicable. Unmanned ship makes ocean passage with none, or at most, a few specially-trained operators, but is to be served with shore-based crew while manoeuvring in and out of harbours. This idea comes from our analysis which tells that functions of crew in coastal waters and harbours are substantially different from the one in open sea. Automatization of ocean passages, both navigation and running machinery, will be practicable and reliable at a reasonable expense. Coastal navigation and manoeuvring in and out of harbours will, however, depend much on manual handling and human decision-making at least for the time being.