Shipbuilding Project Research Articles

Knowledge transfer in shipbuilding projects: a study of facilitating mechanisms

This research provides insight into the important role of experienced sailing officers in shipbuilding projects. The aim of this exploratory case study was to develop an understanding of mechanisms used to facilitate knowledge transfer. We identify five shipbuilding phases as scoping, specification, negotiation, construction and acceptance testing. Further we identify the important role of experienced sailing officers in knowledge transfer between ship owner, shipyard, and the shipbuilding project. The original value of the paper is the use of knowledge management theory to extend the scientific research and theory of shipbuilding and to inform project managers on knowledge transfer mechanisms.

Transforming the Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Project Environment

In April 2008, NSRP awarded the project entitled "Customization of Web-Based Planning and Production Engineering Technologies to Support Integrated Shipyard Work Flow," a collaborative research project that included Bollinger Shipyards and Atlantic Marine-Mobil. The purpose of the project was to develop and validate a project management approach to shipbuilding and ship maintenance through the delivery of a web-based production and engineering management tool tailored to the needs of this industry along with a reliable, exportable implementation process using planning and production engineering methodologies. This project was designed to enable shipyards to achieve reduction in project costs and cycle time through project standardization and the ability to perform rapid replanning while maintaining align-ment of all project stakeholders in real time. The project enabled the shipyards to bring forth quantifiable improvement opportunities that reflected the biggest impact on project delivery. This paper shares insight into the key findings derived through this transformational body of research, as well as provide an understanding of the robust process used to implement the shipyard-specific web-based project solutions in ship-building and ship repair project environments. The paper also provides a quantification and appreciation of the resulting cost benefits experienced by each of the participating shipyards. New construction programs in each of the shipyards enabled real-time metrics to be captured, illustrating the achievement of cost reduction opportunities resulting from this project.

A Statistical Analysis of Engineering Project Risks in the Korean Shipbuilding Industry

Risk management in shipbuilding projects is important in practice, but there have been few studies about risk assessment in the shipbuilding industry. The purpose of this study is to identify critical risks in shipbuilding projects and to examine the relationships among them, according to the ship production phases. A survey analysis was conducted with 248 experts from 10 major Korean shipbuilders in April 2007, and association rule mining was used as the research methodology. Twenty-six different risks are deduced. At the beginning stage of shipbuilding, it was discovered that design and financial risks were related, and human resource risks in ship design had relatively more influence but financial risks did not. At the block manufacturing stage, important risk factors were management of production equipment, supply of raw materials and labor, and quality management. Financial, technical, and managerial risks all had an important influence at this phase. At the erection stage, technical risks such as changes in design and managerial risks such as exceeding time and budget limits proved to be important. At the project finalization, phase risks were exchange rates, interest rates, timeline, fulfilling specifications, and natural disasters. The research results could be valuable for industrial participants to understand the shipbuilding risks in each construction stage.

CAD-Plan Connector

This paper presents the theory behind Atlantec Enterprise Solutions' CAD-Plan Connector Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) project and explains the build strategy-based and materials-centric approach to the development of shipbuilding engineering and production schedules. CAD-Plan Connector provides a mechanism for developing a common parts catalog-based materials database for a specific shipbuilding project and a semiautomated method for establishing a build strategy and product work breakdown structure.

금융환경 변동 하에서 실적가치 기법에 의한 함정건조사업 관리 방안 연구

Naval ships are complex weapon systems which play the integrated performance by system integration of many kinds of weapon systems and their leading ships are usually not disposed after test and evaluation but militarised. Then, strict project management is required for naval ship building projects by identifying problems early and by taking prefer measures in time against unexpected situations encountered in the process of the projects. EVMS is a project management system which can manage the schedule and the budget of a project concurrently and estimate the project`s time duration and the cost at project completion. In this paper, the applicability and usefulness of WMS is studied for a assumed navai ship building project, in the environment of monetary fluctuations such as price index, wage increase rate and exchange rate.

Numerical Simulation Of Welding In Shipbuilding

In the context of a fierce competition between European and Asian shipyards, quality and productivity improvement are of major importance. Continuous work has always been done on welding techniques : 0 to increase the efficiency of the traditional Arc welding technology; to master the new technology of metal joining by Laser welding; to adopt a Laser-Arc combination process (Hybrid Laser welding). In this paper, advantages and drawbacks of each process are briefly analysed. A short presentation of the PRINCIPIA methodology of numerical simulation initially developed for Arc welding process is presented and an adaptation to Laser and Hybrid Laser process is then described enabling for a new shipbuilding project to predict, control and optirnise the design andlor the welding parameters in order to avoid excessive distortions due to welding effects on thin stiffened panel assemblies in shipbuilding. Those distortions imply costly straightening work. Finally, as an example, a fine finite element model is presented modelling an assembly of three thin stiffened plates which are joined by arc welding process. The buckling state of the calculated model is then identified with the real buckled deformed shape of the arc-welded assembly in order to test the validity of the PRINCIPIA methodology.

Engineering data management through different breakdown structures in a large-scale project

This document discusses the benefits stemming from managing different project breakdown structures with an engineering data management system. The structures discussed are project breakdown structure (PBS), assembly breakdown structure (ABS), as-built structure and hardware breakdown. Each structure is presented from the quality management point of view and a practical example of each of the four structures is given to illustrate their differences, and to show what kind of engineering information is to be stored in these structures. The main underlying case is that of CERN and its global, over a decade-long Large Hadron Collider project. The approach used for managing the new particle accelerator project is benchmarked against the way large-scale shipbuilding projects are managed. It is concluded that several structures are needed to manage complex system projects, and that linking information between structures plays a crucial role for the overall success of the project. Information technology and WWW are envisaged to provide the means to manage complex structures among geographically distributed project organisations.

Culture as a Driving Force for Interfirm Adaptation:: A Chinese Case

The concept of interfirm adaptation is a critical component in the IMP (industrial marketing and purchasing) paradigm. The existing wisdom points to the “five metaphors” (investment, decision making, political process, learning, and evolution) as the cognitive map for understanding the mechanisms of interfirm adaptations. This article, however, reveals that culture can be a significant force driving interfirm adaptations. An empirical case of a Chinese shipyard negotiating large shipbuilding projects with Scandinavian ship owner and classification society is used to illustrate the role that culture plays in interfirm adaptations. The article concludes by suggesting adding a new metaphor—the culture metaphor—to the list of the metaphors to better understand the workings of interfirm adaptation in business relationships.

Aegis AAW Correlator/Tracker (AACT) Experiment

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in continuing development of the Aegis Command and Control capabilities aboard USS Ticonderoga class cruisers and USS Arleigh Burke class destroyers, under the direction of the Aegis Shipbuilding Project (PMS-400), is in the process of developing the Aegis AAW Correlator/Tracker (AACT) to experiment with and evaluate the capability to correlate track and contact data from over-the-horizon (OTH) sources and sensors with the shipboard real-time tactical picture. AACT, which is based on multi-hypothesis correlation algorithms, is intended to be fully automated; requiring little or no operator interaction in spite of ambiguous or conflicting data. Unlike other OTH correlator/tracker designs, the experimental AACT capability is highly integrated with the combat system. It makes maximum use of the shipboard sensor data, such as that provided by the AN/SPY-1 radar, to provide the basis from which to correlate the OTH data in areas of mutual sensor coverage. This approach helps to resolve the traditional conflicts between the tactical picture derived from battle group sensors and that derived from OTH sensors, and provides command the track data in the formats, rates, and timeliness needed to fight the AAW battle. This paper describes the AACT concept, design, and implementation. It addresses the plans for installation of AACT aboard an Aegis cruiser for evaluation of this capability in an operational environment.

A Group Technology Approach to Master Scheduling of Shipbuilding Projects

This paper describes the current Master Scheduling approach used at National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO) in San Diego. Master schedules at NASSCO focus on key interim products involved in ship construction: units, blocks, (on-board) zones, and tests. Network scheduling algorithms (that is, Critical Path) are used. Each interim product has an associated subnet. Categorization by type is used to simplify the task of developing and maintaining activity lists, dependencies (predecessor/successor relationships) and durations for the thousands of activities. Manual level-loading of critical resources is incorporated into and supported by the overall scheduling process. The paper includes some discussion of problems encountered in the implementation of this scheduling approach.

ADVANCED GRAPHICS FOR COMMAND DISPLA YS

ABSTRACTApplication of computer graphics to tactical displays should not default to simplistic expectations or to clever uses of color. Under the sponsorship of the Aegis shipbuilding project we have defined a method of applying advanced graphics techniques to command displays that asks “What is the display to do?” rather than “What color shall be make it?” The target display is the Aegis display system tactical plot, or track picture. This display has evolved to include graphic elements representing the environment, combat system capabilities, and battle plans. If these elements are all needed in the same display the resulting picture has the potential for great complexity. This paper provides a method for designing uncluttered displays that contain the needed amounts of data. The method develops displays from primary system requirements and includes a computer program (a rule‐based system) that assigns hardware attributes (including gray scale, color, and area fill) to components of the picture (display elements). The resultant display is data intensive but not overwhelmingly complex.

“DESIGN BUDGETING” ‐ A BOLD NEW SHIP ACQUISITION STRATEGY… NOW A PROVEN CONCEPT

ABSTRACTTraditional ship acquisition practices no longer support the requirements of today's shipbuilding programs. These practices require development of major combat and ship systems to be essentially complete prior to issuance by the government of the Request For Proposal (RFP) for ship detail design and construction. With the need for timely delivery of warships equipped with the most modern weapon systems possible, and maximum remaining years of functional effectiveness after delivery becoming increasingly important, new acquisition strategies are essential. “Design Budgeting,” an innovative new Navy acquisition and design strategy, is now a proven concept. Developed and implemented by the AEGIS Shipbuilding Project, it has been explored in depth with the Shipbuilding Industry as an alternative acquisition process that enables Combat System development and ship acquisition to proceed concurrently. Applied for the first time in the acquisition of Ticonderoga (CG‐47), its use permitted development of major portions of the AEGIS Combat System (later to be Government Furnished Equipment to the shipbuilder) to continue well into ship detail design and construction without impact on overall schedules. Hundreds of changes to the ship engineering baseline which resulted from continued development and test of Combat System, were incorporated into the shipbuilding contract with no cost increase or delay and disruption of the shipbuilding schedule. Proven, adaptable, and available now, “Design Budgeting” is an acquisition and design strategy than can satisfy the requirements of current and future shipbuilding programs.