Shipbuilding Technology and Education (1996) / Chapter Skim
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State of Technology Application in U.S. Shipbuilding
State of Technology Application in U.S. Shipbuilding
Pages 25-60
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shipbuilders focused increasingly on high-technology Navy ships. Fewer than 20 commercial ships have been ordered from U.S.
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shipyard since the 1950s. There have been several other promising announcements for foreign-flag commercial ships, but no other contracts from U.S.
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The integrated marketing approach used effectively by foreign shipbuilders is one in which a builder's business processes and technology use are closely coordinated to achieve an overall competitive advantage. Experts in commercial practice suggested that U.S.
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. Some further observations can be made about successful commercial marketing in today's international environment.
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Because of their long absence from the world commercial shipbuilding scene, U.S. shipbuilders have not had the opportunity to develop either longstanding relationships or favorable reputations with prospective international commercial customers.
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In ABC, production activities are allocated overhead and other costs according to actual consumption of corporate resources, such as sales, marketing, administration, and other activities, rather than by averaging across all activities.1 Good commercial cost systems identify all the real inputs to a product; the value of system calculations depends significantly on the architecture of process simulation (a technology addressed further below)
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Automated design can be used to produce the greatest number of alternative designs, together with their total economy calculations, for the commercial customer's consideration. The following measures have been reported to be critical for automated design systems: • Develop a small but extremely competent commercial ship design and engineering staff that is not burdened by military projects and the associ ated paperwork.
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Some of these shipbuilders are changing their methods so that they, like those few U.S. shipbuilders that have operated largely in a commercial shipbuilding market with a minimum of government involvement, will soon be able to operate in the international market.
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Foreign shipbuilders depend, instead, on small groups of suppliers with whom they have closer, longer-term relationships -- relationships that often reflect other features of the "material control" model, such as a yard working with suppliers to ensure the use of new technology. Foreign shipbuilders also emphasize just-in-time approaches to material management, beginning with identification and purchasing, through warehousing, marshaling, handling, and assembling (Storch et al., 1994)
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They must select shipbuilding market niches in which they can be competitive, adapt the technologies required to develop competitive products, apply the product technologies required to differentiate their products (ship designs) from competitors' products, develop the process technologies required to design and build these products competitively, and last but not least, develop strategies for the procurement of everything the yard cannot make efficiently.
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In addition to developing technology to better outsource, such as better largeunit assembly/block planning and better accuracy control and quality assurance procedures applicable to subcontractors, U.S. shipbuilders need to develop appropriate business relationships with suppliers.
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The latter observation provides some support for the idea that "dual-use" yards -- yards producing both military and commercial ships -- can be maintained successfully. While the adaptability of direct labor is probably not so much a problem, the size of the current work force is, to some degree, a problem.
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Advances in such technology can be found in both U.S. and foreign shipbuilders.
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The shipbuilders could also develop better information management systems by building, say, six or seven commercial ships per year (perhaps through subsidy support or a requirement for cargo reservation for U.S.-built ships) ; however, such an approach is not required
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than when handling commercial contracts. If the current Sealift ships were defined only through performance requirements, without invoking government procurement requirements, and thus were purchased by the Navy in the same way that commercial buyers procure ships, perhaps 90 percent of the benefits of producing a commercial ship for the international market might be obtained.
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Design The subject of design was discussed above under Business Practice Technologies, especially the importance of the ship design process to marketing. Design will also be discussed under New Materials and Product Technologies, where the emphasis will be on developing new types of ship design for the market.
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Simulation is being used by some foreign shipbuilders to design automation improvements. Of the six system technology areas surveyed by the committee, process simulation must receive the highest priority, for it gives structure to all the other efforts to improve the competitiveness of U.S.
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shipbuilding processes are exceptionally unstable, involving a lot of rework and disrupted schedules. Problems of outdated production processes have been exacerbated by the almost exclusive emphasis in the United States in recent years on producing military vessels.
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Procurement on the international market, which offers only metric parts, will be required for commercial ships and could, at the same time, provide commercial/naval consistency in the production of new U.S. Navy ship designs.
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Proposed changes in yard layout or other facilities must be carefully assessed for downstream and upstream effects as well as immediate effects, before proceeding. These changes should be undertaken using a team approach that includes facility personnel, design engineers, production planners/process control personnel, and material handling experts, as well as company consultant specialists, to analyze the production throughput for optimum results and improvement.
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For this study, the shipyard production processes of material handling, accuracy control, steel fabrication, block assembly and erection, outfitting, blasting and coating, and testing were investigated for the application of technology compared to foreign yards and for potential impact on the international competitiveness of U.S. shipbuilding.
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For the advantages of group technology to be fully realized, however, shipyards must have advanced accuracy control systems so the separate pieces will fit together properly with a minimum of rework. There are two kinds of accuracy control: dimensional process control and statistical process control.
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Block size and erection process must be strongly linked. This is where it all comes together -- accuracy control, build strategy, block size and scope, and outfitting.
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Navy ships have achieved a high level of preoutfitting skills. But without recent experience in commercial ship production, they may not be able to achieve the same degree of technological application as more-experienced foreign competitors who have been building series of commercial ships.
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U.S. shipbuilders will probably perform less testing on commercial ships because commercial products are much simpler and because, for commercial ships, considerations of price override quality considerations faster than for military ships.
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A wide variety of product technologies -- ship designs, propulsion technologies, new materials, and other shipboard systems and components -- might offer competitive advantages for U.S. shipbuilders.
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The main candidates -- gas turbine and gas-turbine diesel or combined electric integrated propulsion systems -- are relevant only to niche markets, such as LNG tankers, short-distance shuttle tankers, extremely environmentally friendly tankers, fast ships, and cruise ships. Other prospective propulsion types, such as fuel cells and permanent magnet motors, are worth pursuing partly because of potentially low environmental impacts and also because they might reduce manning requirements.
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An example of advanced propulsion plant technology applied to tankers is now being evaluated as part of a fiscal year 1994 ARPA MARITECH project. Overall ship design tradeoffs are being made between alternate designs of integrated electric propulsion and ship service power plants; conventional directdrive, slow-speed diesel propulsion; and geared medium-speed diesel propulsion.
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fHere is an area where experience with U.S. Navy ships and technology form a good high speed commercial ship base.
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Committee members and workshop participants felt strongly on this subject, which is addressed in greater depth in Chapter 3. Ballast Tank Protective Coatings Another technology area that may have major competitive impacts is ballast tank protective coatings.
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The life of the coating is affected by the configuration of the steel structure and the quality of the steel fabrication process.
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shipbuilding industry's current capabilities for building commercial ships of various types and capacities in terms of construction time; design and engineering labor requirements; nonrecurring labor, recurring production labor, and direct material costs; general requirements cost; and overhead expenses. Construction time could be broken down into two periods: (1)
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However, improvements in production processes cannot occur in isolation; they must be part of a total manufacturing process, which requires contracts for ship production. The current marketing strategy of many U.S.
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Navy ships rather than the precontract and contract designs of commercial ships. The training U.S.
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The level of technology application in the United States for outfitting and preoutfitting U.S. Navy ships is the same as that in foreign shipyards for commercial ships.
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Project funded by the National Shipbuilding Research Program, for the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Ship Production Committee, Program Design/Produc tion Integration Panel. October 7.
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