Collaborative Engineering in the Shipbuilding Environment

Abstract

The shipbuilding market is more and more under pressure to reduce construction schedules and manufacturing costs. The amount of engineering work has drastically increased due to the general acceptance of the "design for production" strategy. Furthermore, shipowners are demanding very complex ships that require larger engineering capacity. All these factors lead to an increase in the design capacity and the number of man-hours involved in engineering activity. On the other hand, the tendency of most shipyards is to reduce the work force of their engineering departments. This fact negatively affects the shipbuilding market. The large shipyards seek to increase their design capacity by subcontracting a substantial part of the engineering, particularly the detail engineering, to several design agents. Therefore, the engineering work is performed by a set of design offices working simultaneously in different locations and sharing common information. Further, different agents (shipyards, engineering offices, classification societies, equipment suppliers, etc.) participate in the shipbuilding process. These agents require close coordination. Thus, the use of collaborative engineering tools is a very important factor in coping with these demands of the market. Recent improvements in telematics, particularly the availability of cost-effective digital communication services, have made it possible to perform efficient collaborative engineering from different locations.