Offline Vessel Node & Automatic Sync

E-PMS is one system deployed in two roles: an office node for the fleet and a vessel node on each ship. The interface is the same on both. On board, nothing waits on a connection: work is stored locally and reconciled with the office on the next exchange, automatically, without anyone pressing anything.

Built for the Satellite Link

The sync channel behaves like a reliable transport: every exchange is acknowledged, only what changed travels, nothing is sent twice, and a dropped link resumes from where it stopped. It is deliberately not traffic greedy, because it was designed for connections that come and go. Exchanges run in both directions automatically whenever the link is up, and anyone with sync rights can press Sync now to force one. A thin footer on every screen shows whether the vessel is in sync, has changes pending, is receiving a backlog or had a failed exchange. Photos are compressed before they travel, and large documents such as manuals and certificate scans cross the link piece by piece; if the connection drops mid-file, the next exchange continues from where it stopped rather than starting over.

Who Owns What

The office owns the master data: the registry, the maintenance plan, yards, suppliers and decisions. The vessel owns the execution data: running hours, completed work, stock movements, requisitions and risk assessments made on board. Each side records what happens where it happens, and the other side receives it, which avoids the conflicts that make shared-database systems painful at sea.

If the Ship Server Is Down

Crew accounts can sign in on the office address with the same credentials and keep working in vessel mode: the same shipboard interface, locked to their own vessel. Everything recorded this way is queued for the ship, which pulls it down on its first exchange after recovery. Nothing has to be re-entered.

Vessels That Keep Themselves Current

Updates are hot-swapped. A new version downloads in the background and is staged next to the running one; the vessel swaps to it while idle, or immediately when the Master chooses, with a short updating screen and no reinstall. If a swap cannot start, the vessel lifts the screen by itself, so a ship can never be left stuck offline. A vessel that is behind keeps working and pauses receiving until it has updated, so office and ship never disagree about the data they exchange.

Single-Tenant, Backed Up, Scalable

Each operator runs E-PMS on its own isolated deployment with its own application and database. Office data is backed up automatically and fallback servers stand in if the primary fails; every vessel's records are mirrored ashore by sync as well. The office node scales horizontally past 1,000 vessels without loss of performance, and adding a ship is an enrolment, not a migration.

Enrolling and Decommissioning

A new ship joins the fleet by enrolment: the office issues a one-time link, the ship node picks it up at first start and self-populates with its equipment, plan, spares, stock, work orders, crew accounts and certificates over its first exchanges. When a ship is sold, the office deactivates it: on-board data is wiped and the office keeps the complete history.