Structuring design information by analyzing ship specifications

Abstract

When specifications for a merchant vessel are prepared, they are based on existing specifications, and specifications are repeatedly changed in response to the shipowner's requests. Since the components of a ship are complex and interrelated, there is a possibility that some specification items will be changed in accordance with certain specification changes, but the relationships among these specification items are not organized and often depend on the intuition and experience of skilled workers. In this paper, the relationship between specification items for the equipment part of a merchant ship design document is calculated using the Cramer’s coefficient of association and expressed as a network structure so that even a non-skilled person can efficiently create specifications. The related values between specification items were derived on two scales, the components and their attributes, and multiple calculation methods were considered. It was also suggested that clustering specifications in advance and collecting specifications with similar characteristics may enable more accurate calculation of the relationship between specification items.