Major Factors Affecting Tugboat Ship Design and Construction

Abstract

Tugboat shipbuilding activities and costs were studied with a view to deal with the ship design and development problems and to suggest possible solutions. The lack of communication among shipyard design engineers, vendors, regulatory authority personnel, and shipyard construction department managers at the start of the preliminary and detail drawings gave rise to errors in material specifications in design drawings. This caused the shipyard a significant amount of rework on drawings, resulting in wasted labor costs and lengthening of the shipbuilding cycle time. The timely and correct vendor-furnished information (VFI) on material specification, while preparing the preliminary and detailed drawings, would permit the elimination/ reduction of errors and changes made in the drawings. A medium-sized tugboat ship costs about $14 million, comprising about $5 million labor cost and about $9 million of construction material cost. The completion time for this kind of vessel ranges from 28 to 38 months. It would be possible to reduce the labor and material costs and completion time substantially with adequate and timely information of material re- quirements from the vendor through VFI. Management tools and techniques, such as concurrent engineering, computer simulation, and program evaluation review technique (PERT) could be applied advantageously to improve tugboat shipbuilding de- sign and development productivity.