Shiprepair & Conversion Technology: 3rd Quarter 2016
Besides its existing engine service portfolio, provided through MTU ValueCare, MTU offers a wide range of maintenance, remanufacture, overhaul, rebuild, and re-power solutions to the shipping business.
Over the past year or so, MTU has enhanced its capabilities in these areas by developing customer specific overhaul and replacement solutions, improved processes and work methods for enhancing quality and achieving faster delivery, and the development of solutions covering not just main engines, but ancillary components and automation systems, for example.
MTU has recently opened a factory rebuild centre in Singapore featuring a wide range of test benches to cover requirements from the Asian/Pacific market. It has also made further investments in its remanufacturing centre in Magdeburg, which operates as MTU Reman Technologies.
MTU Reman Technologies conditions complete MTU engines according to standardised procedures and reequips them for a second service life. Individual components that are removed are also reconditioned and reused as remanufactured parts. Further test benches with improved state-of-the-art capabilities have been added at Magdeburg, and the company has also developed new technologies, such as low-pressure cold spraying.
Rebuild and remanufacturing options are proving increasingly popular in some market segments. MTU has recently, for instance, exchanged main engines for a ferry operator in Spain with factory rebuilt engines and has modernised a fleet of patrol boats in the Middle East, including engines that have been factory rebuilt.
The company states: “Updating and consolidating old technology with new, especially with respect to automation, is a challenge. However, it is one we are well equipped to face with the expert skills of our staff and the special kits we have developed.”
For the marine sector, MTU offers a range of options, from the overhaul of the existing engine to replacement with a different engine, either of the same type or a new engine model depending on customer demand. The benefits of remanufactured and overhauled/rebuilt equipment include: same-as-new service life; performance and warranty coverage at a fraction of the cost; use of genuine MTU replacement parts; incorporation of model-related updates; and the same time between overhauls as new MTU engines, according to the set maintenance schedule.
MUT has recently supplied remanufactured engines as part of a pilot boat refit programme.
