The Strategy tab of your Design cases provides some mandatory and some optional, more advanced features. The impact these settings have on your simulation outputs are case dependant and are best experimented with to compare results. This page provides a rundown of the available settings and suggestions on how to use them. 

All of these parameters are optional and considered advanced, except for those in the general settings, which are required to run a simulation. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Case time zone
  • Helicopters and time zones
• General
  • Emergency response limit
    • The effect of the emergency response limit
  • Minimum working length
• Technician breaks and shift lengths
• Technical maintenance parameters
• Crew change strategy
• Scheduling strategy
• Work order priority
  • Task and work order types
• Learning curve

Case time zone

Select a time zone based on your case’s location. If you have bases or assets spanning multiple time zones, you will need to choose just one time zone.  

The time zone is only used for daylight restrictions and helicopters. If your case does not feature either of these, this setting has no effect on your outputs. 

Helicopters and time zones

The Shoresim engine limits helicopters to daylight flying hours, using the time zone and the latitude and longitude of the helicopter's home base to calculate the sunrise and sunset times for that specific location. This allows for accurate daylight hour calculations for any location globally, even for different locations within the same time zone. 

General

These two settings are the only required strategy settings. 

Emergency response limit

Set how far a transport logistic can travel from an asset while work is being conducted. It is defined in minutes: set the maximum amount of time a vessel requires to get back to a technician team in an emergency.  

For example, if the emergency response time limit is 30 minutes and a technician team is dropped off at asset A, the logistic that dropped off the technician team can only access assets within a 30-minute radius of asset A.  

We recommended that you set something realistic (30–60 minutes) even if your site does not legally require an emergency response limit, as it can affect your simulation results.  

The effect of the emergency response limit

The effect of different values for the emergency response limit is impossible to predict. Generally, the lower the limit, the fewer tasks can be carried out simultaneously, reducing up time. Inversely—and still generally—the higher the limit, the more tasks can be carried out simultaneously, increasing up time. However, as this is a general rule, there are scenarios where a lower limit can reduce the travel time of the logistic, allowing more maintenance to be conducted in a smaller area, resulting in increased up time.  

We advise you to run comparisons with slightly different values for the emergency response limit if you are interested in seeing the effect it has on your case. If the effect is minor or not noticeable, you can leave the HSE in the 30–60-minute recommended range.  

Minimum working length

Set the minimum amount of work time required on an asset to dispatch a work order. This setting ensures that personnel are not transported to an asset for small time periods of work. 

Technician breaks and shift lengths

Complete both fields for these settings to take effect. Define a shift length and the break time per shift. For example: 

• Break time in total per work shift: 1 hour 
• Work shift length: 12 hours 
• Result: 11 hours of work is completed per 12-hour shift. 

Technical maintenance parameters

Note: This for Construction Design only. 

These two settings provide a way to accommodate for technical (i.e., non-weather-related) vessel downtime. These settings will affect all major vessels (i.e., vessels that feature processes). 

Loadout and installation tasks affects loadout and installation task durations and cable-laying and -burial times. 

Technical maintenance parameters marine operation tasks affects all non-loadout and -installation tasks as well as transit and positioning speeds. 

If you estimate, e.g., your cable installation vessel suffers 10-percent technical downtime, you can enter 10 percent in the Loadout and installation tasks setting. All loadout and installation tasks carried out by installation vessels will take 10 percent longer, simulating a 10-percent technical downtime. 

Crew change strategy

Choose how crew changes occur. 

If you select None, the crew is always available. 

If you select At port or At SOV, there are additional parameters: 

• SOV travels to port for restock/bunkering 
  • When checked, the Time between going to port value in the SOV’s Activity durations tab is used. 
  • If unchecked, the Time between going to port parameter is ignored. 
• Crew period 
  • How long the crew remain on site. 
• Duration of switch 
  • How long a crew-change operation takes to complete. 
• Transport involved 
  • Select the logistics that carry out the crew-change operation. 

Scheduling strategy

Manually configure the times when scheduling takes place. Scheduling occurs automatically by default, with a single scheduling session per day taking place at a time calculated by how long it takes an SOV to travel to the farthest WTG from its off-duty location, this generally means 1–2 hours before work begins. 

The first time you set is when the scheduling for the day should happen. We recommend you set the time an hour before the first shift starts. 

All subsequent scheduling times are when you'd like the simulation to reschedule any tasks that remain for the day. Rescheduling only occurs when a critical corrective maintenance task happens that day. If no critical corrective maintenance task occurs that day, the simulation continues based off the first schedule. 

Notes:

• The simulation engine only schedules on the hour. 
• The time format changes depending on your local computer settings, but when a simulation is run, it reads the time in 24-hour format. 

Work order priority

Set the priority of different work order types. 

While these settings are mostly applicable to Design O&M, you can set the priority on installation and commissioning tasks in Design Construction, as well. 

Expand a dropdown for one of the task types and you will see the available priorities. Click and drag on the six-dot icon to reorder the priorities. Click Add/Remove priority to see any available, unused priorities and use the + and – icons next to a priority to add or remove it from the list. 

There are two additional checkboxes: 

•  Bundle work orders on assets 
  • If an asset has just had a work order scheduled on it, any further work orders assigned to that asset will be prioritized so the work orders can be dispatched together. 
• Redeploy personnel 
  • Personnel on site can move to another work order on site without having to return to base. 
  • We recommend also checking Bundle work orders on assets if you check this setting. 

Task and work order types

There are different task types between Design Construction and Design O&M. Task types are prioritized in the order listed (e.g., installation tasks take priority over commissioning tasks). You can set the priority of tasks within each task type. 

• Design Construction:
  • Installation 
  • Commissioning
• Design O&M: 
  • Major corrective 
  • Minor corrective 
  • Started scheduled tasks 
  • Non-started scheduled tasks

The prioritization options are listed in the table below.

Learning curve

Note: Design Construction only.

Model improving efficiency through repetition of tasks. Generally, tasks will take less time to complete the more they are conducted, as expertise improves. The learning curve allows you to model this in the Shoreline engine. You can apply a learning curve to all major vessels, i.e., those that feature processes. 

Here’s how to enable the learning curve: 

1. Set a loadout or installation task duration in a logistic’s Processestab. 

    

2. Enable the learning curve on the process:

   1. Click the Learning Curve button.
      

   2. Select Inherit learning curve from Strategy. 

   3. Select whether to apply the learning curve to each task cycle individually or across all task cycles. 

      • If you select all task cycles, the learning curve operates across multiple vessels. If you have, e.g., 2 HLVs with the same configuration, the first, e.g., loadout on HLV 1 will count as cycle one and the first loadout for HLV 2 will count as cycle 2.

   4. Click Confirm.

For any loadout and installation task with durations set in a logistic’s Processes tab and the learning curve enabled, the learning curve counts the number of times the task is carried out and multiplies the input duration of the task by the activity time percentage for each cycle. 

In the example screenshot below, the first time the task (e.g. WTG installation) is carried out, it will take 50 percent longer than the task duration set. The second time the task is carried out, it will take 25 percent longer. The third time this task is performed, it will take the time set as the task duration.

The last value that you enter, 100 in the example above, is used for all subsequent tasks, so in this example any tasks after cycle 3 will continue to take the time set as the task duration. 

If you leave gaps between cycle numbers then the values for intermediary cycles are interpolated, e.g., if only enter values for cycles 1 and 5, then the time percentages for cycles 2, 3, and 4 are interpolated from the values you enter for 1 and 5.