Simplifying Customer, Engineering, and Supplier Changes
Changes account for 46% of schedule slips. Getting change management right is one of the most important challenges for every shipbuilder. No matter if a change affects one block or an entire series of sister ships, it needs to be easy for every department to understand how it impacts them and how the change will be executed.
Right Information, Right Time
Managing shipbuilding change effectively across the entire organization is a massive business edge. SSI’s approach gives affected departments visibility into the changes made, an understanding of how it will impact them, and the right information at the right time to act on the change.
- Purchasing will want to see a BOM list of all the parts created, deleted, and modified along with the corresponding attributes.
- The weight engineer will want a list of parts per SWBS that was created, deleted, and modified along with their corresponding weight information.
- The production floor may want to see the changes to the shop floor documents and corresponding CNC files.
- Other departments may want to see a 3D visual of the parts that have changed so they can quickly understand the impact of the change on their activities.
Track and Disseminate Changes Across Every Affected Department
The information platform in place needs to be flexible enough to support a virtually limitless combination of changes. By integrating with the systems already in-place delivery of information is invisible to every stakeholder and implementation is easy. This open platform of platforms approach means that every department is aware of what, when, and how a change will impact them.
Achieving flexibility and clarity in change management was one of the goals behind Ingalls Shipbuilding’s transition to a shipbuilding specific PLM solution. The post-PLM workflow slashed the number of manual activities required to execute and communicate a change and brought every department onto the same page.
Reduce the Need for Rework and Disruption
Organizations need to be equipped to make changes with as little disruption as possible. Whenever a required activity is defined, a shipbuilding-first engineering solution makes it possible to understand precisely what is being changed and by whom, make the change, and intelligently transfer the change across the project at hand and throughout the organization as needed.
Task Management
When engineering can capture a perfect plan of the required change, they have a complete idea of what has already been done and what still needs to be executed.
One Change, Multiple Hulls
No two hulls or projects are the same. By automatically and intelligently transferring changes across hulls, right down to the part level, the engineering team keeps the amount of rework to a minimum. Only changing what is in common between the projects, and not modifying what’s already been addresses, means your team can focus on making the change right once.
Implementing Engineering Change in Shipbuilding
It’s impossible to foresee every change. When your organization works more efficiently due to better visibility, they can focus their resources on innovation, avoid risks to timelines, and make more-informed decisions.
