Marine Products & Services

Prism Systems' Marine Products Division provides shipboard control solutions and propulsion management systems for the international commercial marine industry. Combined with our extensive engineering experience in drives & controls, our Vessel Management System (VMS) provides an integrated, cost-effective shipboard management product that dramatically reduces development costs and can provide considerable savings in installation and sea-trial time.

The VMS system is a fully redundant PLC-based system that uses distributed I/O to monitor and control equipment throughout the vessel. Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products are used throughout the system to provide ease-of-maintenance/repair and to ensure a cost-effective upgrade capability.

Prism Systems Vessel Management System (VMS) provides a extensive functionality spanning many areas of the ship including:

Sample projects
Roy M. Wheat
860 foot Rapid Deployment Vessel

The VMS's distributed I/O architecture offers many advantages over other approaches. For one, it reduces the amount of cabling that must be pulled back to a central location. Only communications cable must be pulled between the PLC cabinet and each I/O enclosure. This distributed I/O architecture also allows the system to be easily expanded for use on larger vessels or to accommodate additional functionality in an existing installation. The I/O data is collected and controlled over a redundant, industry-standard control network (such as Profibus, DeviceNet, Modbus, etc.). An Ethernet network also provides communications between the operator interfaces and the PLC equipment. Ethernet communications between the PLC's and between the PLC's and the server are redundant to ensure that an exchange of critical information occurs in a timely fashion. Additionally, all PLC and operator interface hardware are powered by uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) adding an additional level of redundancy and fault-tolerance.