Software, services, and expertise for the business of shipbuilding.

        • Achieve a Quick ROI

        • Sliced implementations and our expertise means a benefit from day one, without a lengthy setup.

        • Integrate, Collaborate, Re-use

        • SSI’s Open Shipbuilding Platform gives you a future-proof source of truth for your shipbuilding projects.

        • Change Management

        • Get visibility into changes, understand the impacts, and have the right information at the right time to execute the change.

        • Adapt and Innovate

        • Create a local or virtualized shipbuilding environment for your global distributed workforce.

        • Changing from Another Solution

        • SSI makes it easy to switch from other platforms and keep your existing data.

        • Design

        • The most significant opportunities to impact the cost of building and operating a ship are found in the design and engineering phase.

          Initial Design  |  Basic Design  |  Detailed Design

        • Build

        • Even a smaller shipbuilding project is immense in scope and scale. Manage the challenges that are unique to ship construction.

          Prepare  |  Fabricate  |  Assemble

        • Maintain

        • With the majority of a ship’s life taking place after it’s been built, it’s crucial to ensure that the organization has a clear picture of the vessel at all times.

          Digital Twin  |  Repair / Refit  |  Operations

        • Nexus

        • SSI Nexus is the place where users, creators, & implementers of SSI software get together. Here they discuss best practices & industry trends, tackle common challenges, gain access to the latest software, and provide input into the future of the products that bring them together.

        • MyLearning

        • SSI MyLearning is where SSI users can access detailed training exercises, materials, courses, and certifications. The self-directed training curriculum ensures that training happens on your schedule and when you need it most.

        • SSI Blogs

        • The SSI blog is your place to get insights into the intersection of shipbuilding and technology, how our industry is moving forward, and keep up with SSI news. It’s the only place to read the latest from Denis Morais and Darren Larkins, SSI’s co-CEOs.

          Lighthouse  |  Waveform  |  Shipbuilding Solutions

        • ShipConstructor

        • Engineering information is a shipbuilder’s most important asset. Getting that information to fit your business means using a solution that is built to handle shipbuilding’s unique challenges and information requirements throughout each stage of a vessel’s lifecycle.

        • EnterprisePlatform

        • Every process in a shipyard requires data. Seamlessly sharing that data across tools in the correct format needed allows for meaningful, actionable information to be consumed throughout the organization. Providing the freedom to choose the tailored tools required for a shipbuilding project.

        • ShipbuildingPLM

        • ShipbuildingPLM is the only product lifecycle management (PLM) platform that is specifically built for the business of shipbuilding. It allows your shipyard to manage and organize information, understand change, build a foundation for digital innovation, and support MRO activities – without the risks and costs of traditional PLM implementations.

        • Company

        • Learn more about SSI and our leadership.

        • Locations & Contact

        • You need a partner with a global presence.

        • News

        • The latest on SSI and shipbuilding.

        • Events

        • Join us at our next event, conference, or trade show.

        • Partners

        • Learn more about our Platform and Development Partners.

        • Clients

        • See the industry leaders who trust SSI.

        • Careers

        • Help us make the business of shipbuilding possible.

The Challenge

Ingalls Shipbuilding

Ingalls Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), is a major builder of ships for the United States Government. With 11,500+ employees and a shipyard encompassing 800 acres, this naval shipyard builds complex ships for the United States Navy.

Shipyards have been designing, building, and maintaining ships with remarkable precision for centuries. Hundreds of years of tested shipbuilding specific knowledge have resulted in naval masterpieces across the globe. Shipyards like Ingalls are continuing the shipbuilding legacy by using the best technologies of today to progress as shipyards of the future.

a gif of a visual representation of the design, build, and maintain phases in shipbuilding.

Digital Shipbuilding

Get a first-hand experience of what the design, build, and maintenance phases are like in an increasingly digital shipyard.

Experience now

It is essential to discuss the critical importance of collaboration to transform the way we do business to improve our collective execution.

Mike Petters, President and CEO of Huntington Ingalls Industries

Ingalls Shipbuilding had adopted CATIA as an early step into a digital shipbuilding world but eventually found that the generic CAD/CAM solution’s restrictive architecture was hindering their potential.

CATIA is excellent for building airplanes and automobiles, and it excels at 3D parametric outputs; however, CATIA cannot efficiently distribute information from its system to other essential business systems such as MRP, ERP, and custom-built tools. It struggles to generate production-oriented outputs for the needs of the business of shipbuilding. CATIA was a costly investment for a closed architecture platform that committed Ingalls to a non-shipbuilding specific solution. The closed architecture software was prohibiting workflows and processes that were critical to the act of designing and engineering a ship.

ShipConstructor is able to communicate freely with other tools

SSI API Interactions

The Solution

For over 30 years, ShipConstructor has stood out as the software solution most focused on shipbuilding. The choice by founder Rolf Oetter to focus on shipbuilding specific challenges has allowed SSI to create software that understands how to digitize shipbuilding specific knowledge in a meaningful way. Exceptional capabilities, like quality control features such as interference checking, integration with Autodesk Navisworks, and advanced sister ship management, significantly improved Ingalls ability to construct ships on time and under budget.

» Easy to Use and Upgrade

An AutoCAD foundation helped Ingalls find and train workers more quickly since AutoCAD is the world’s most widely used CAD program. AutoCAD is renowned for its 2D and 3D capabilities, and SSI’s choice to use it as an interface for ShipConstructor has resulted in an easy to use information-centric CAD/CAM solution. Among many other powerful functions, it is capable of creating, recreating, or changing a model drawing with data alone. SSI’s quarterly software updates provide high value and take in to account the needs voiced by its users. The updates don’t cause rework or break processes. Easy and risk-free updates allowed Ingalls Shipbuilding to focus on honing its processes and workflows with certainty.

» Freedom from a Closed Architecture

SSI created its software solutions with an open architecture because it knew that shipyards need to use the best solutions to meet deadlines and KPIs. The best solutions can quickly become antiquated and throttle entire interdependent processes to a crawl. SSI’s open architectures allowed Ingalls Shipbuilding to easily augment existing methods and tools with the technologies of today to meet the increasing demand for quicker and more cost-effective production. The addition of ShipConstructor also enabled Ingalls to phase out legacy software incrementally.

ShipConstructor’s AutoCAD foundation with an information-centric and rules-based user interface

PreWeight ShipConstructor Screenshot

The Result

Download the full case study below to see detailed information on Ingalls Shipbuilding’s processes before and after implementing ShipConstructor, and how they gained the benefits of:

An End to End Solution
Rules-based Design
Planning in 3D
Concurrent Engineering
Effective Change Management
A Quick Implementation

Access the Content

Download the PDF

Digital Transition in Defense Case Study