Increased Shipyard Productivity Through a Mindset Shift

What is the end goal driving digital transformation in shipbuilding? In broad strokes, the answer is often “to streamline processes and improve efficiency.” Why then, have improvements to productivity stagnated, even as more and more digital tools claim to offer solutions? The answer lies in the need to change how we think about our shipbuilding processes, not just how we perform them. 

We’ve talked about this topic many times before. Even in 2016, our co-CEO Denis Morais was asking: 

Changing the mindset shipbuilders have around performing their work is one part of improving competitiveness using modern and innovative tools. In this case, competitiveness is measured in terms of cost-price, lead time, and quality. 

Integrating Information Across the Organization 

One mindset shift that is required is around how we communicate and work with information across our organizations. The traditional approach relies on a one-directional pushing of information to where it needs to go. This can take the form of either an individual that is responsible for the dissemination of information or departments that are beholden to receiving information from an upstream department, without input on what is relevant to them and when. 

The shift is to work towards a strategy that allows for information to be pulled when it is needed. This is not the same as constantly sharing every piece of information to everyone all of the time. 

We see this happen in action when engineering teams are tasked to deliver technical documentation before a deadline; however, often the need-by dates required by production teams are not explicitly communicated resulting in inefficiently prioritized work. The outcome is inefficiency and production delays. 

Integrating Need-by Dates From Production 

Overcoming this challenge is one of the topics Floorganise Managing Director Ronald de Vries will touch on in our upcoming webinar on the “5 Keys to Enhancing Shipyard Productivity.” Alongside integrating the need-by dates from production with priorities for the engineering team, Ronald will examine how a mindset shift can make it easier to apply LEAN shipbuilding practices within a digital shipyard, how to connect released information directly from PLM to a shipyard MES, and how to recognize 90% of all dependencies and relations within operational processes prior to the completion of the engineering model. 

The webinar is coming up soon on July 27^th. You can learn more and register for the live event and recording below.