Marine Propulsion Control

Situation

Berg Propulsion's marine control system is how the bridge crew commands a vessel's propellers and thrusters. Its display units show the values the crew steers by, such as propeller pitch and RPM. Spare parts for the existing display units became scarce, which put new deliveries and support for vessels already at sea at risk.

Task

Deliver a replacement display unit quickly: hardware-compatible with the existing control system, reliable enough for a ship's bridge, and built so it wouldn't limit how the platform could grow. I owned it end to end, from development to production and field deployment.

Action

• Development: set up the toolchain for the new embedded hardware and built the display application, including switching between operational modes.
• Troubleshooting built in: added logging so alarm logs and system data can be retrieved from the field to diagnose issues quickly.
• Production-ready: defined hardware validation and production processes so units can be built and tested consistently.
• Field support: created procedures for deployment, log retrieval and board recovery on board, and documented everything for the development, production and service teams.

Result

• Delivered on schedule, with more functionality than the original requirements.
• In production since 2023 as part of Berg's MPC800 marine control system, with plans to scale to global deployment on tugboats, oil tankers and cargo ships.
• A platform, not just a fix: an easy-to-deploy application base that makes critical ship control data more resilient and that later work, like the Marine Information Display, builds on.