Sharing supply chains to create new capacity will depend on deeper collaboration and a data-first model.
This article originally published on SplashTech
The hardening geopolitical situation is rapidly changing the outlook for defence sector shipbuilders. They face the challenge of putting more assets on the water more quickly than before and equipping these vessel to respond to new threats.
This puts a focus on the constrained supply of human capital and calls for a more responsive way of working, one that has governance and flexibility designed into the engineering, planning and production process.
The ships being commissioned must be more flexible too, able to respond to changing mission requirements and be maintained remotely, with increased support from shore during the operational lifecycle.
A smarter process is needed
The need to work with speed and at a high level of complexity means shipyards must sometimes make engineering changes even while steel is being cut – and the changes will keep coming.
Naval and commercial yards alike can struggle with the engineering/planning/production interface. The legacy approach is for the engineering department to send drawings at the planning process in the hope they can be organised well enough to feed the production cycle.
A regular flow of engineering changes creates multiple issues, not least because planners might still be absorbing the previous round of changes as new ones arrive.
An efficient engineering/planning/production interface is one that enables both engineering and planning to run collaborative and independent workflows with each discipline choosing when to incorporate change within the wider context of a shipbuilding program and shipyard workflows.
A shipbuilding specific PLM platform provides the necessary framework for this improved cross-discipline interface, enabling a Model Based Enterprise (MBE) and a configured ‘digital thread’ that runs through the design, engineering, planning and production process.
Teams can work together but are not constrained; collaborative change can be effected without impeding velocity of the production process. 3D visualization of change facilitates understanding of change impacts and status of shipbuilding progress, allowing for more informed scoping decisions before change is implemented.
Enabling skills
Skills shortages are the inevitable consequence of ramping up capacity, especially in a naval context. For medium to large naval projects the build cycle is long and each project is unique.
Yards looking to take on new contracts and increase production are those most likely to recruit staff but these new hires may face challenges understanding large, unfamiliar drawings. Traditional blueprints include all information at once without priorities: trying to understand them requires close support.
A shipyard MBE platform enables the adoption of digital work instructions, facilitating the creation of production deliverables in 3D in smaller steps of work than large complex drawings, making them easier to understand by a younger workforce raised on gaming platforms.
The speed with which new staff can become proficient can be reduced by 50% or more. Deploying digital work instructions requires engineering and planning to collaborate more effectively to deliver this content, and improved PLM enabled engineering/planning interface workflows are a key first step for an effective implementation.
Shipyard supply chain collaboration
Shipyards subcontract work for two principal reasons, to meet schedules without the need to develop their own new facilities and to satisfy politically-driven demands for a shared supply chain.
Facilities pitching for the raft of new naval contracts are under increasing pressure to make new hires, use sub-contractors or both. While the former creates issues of training and skills, the latter requires creation of an integrated digital supply chain from design office to the production floor.
There are examples of shipyards working successfully with remote partners, but this owes as much to technology and the use of data as it does to policy. Any apparently stable business environment is subject to change, but while the ability to leverage a wider supply chain may be attractive, the ability to collaborate across national boundaries remains testing.
While PLM enabled supply chain collaboration with subcontractors has become the norm in large complex aerospace projects, digitalisation of shipyards is more uneven. The top tier is already transforming aggressively but the majority is still closer to the start of the process.
Buyers want to avoid being in a position of risk: a shared supply chain must be highly robust if it is to meet construction schedules without disruption. It makes essential the digital thread between stakeholders.
Into the transition
It is clear is that we are transitioning from the legacy ‘steel and paper’ model to one defined by shipyard data sets. The vessels being built now are the first truly digital ships, whose production creates a rich data set.
If partners are operating without control of data and the mechanisms to understand change propagation, they will continue to experience issues that can create huge inefficiencies and lead to delays.
We should not pretend that transforming years of manual working practice into a digital-first, shared workflow environment is easy for all stakeholders.
But with the right tools and having proven shipbuilding specific solutions that provide tangible ROI with short implementation schedules, it’s possible to simplify the adoption of 3D model-based design and PLM and make it as easy to administer for smaller and medium-sized shipyards as it is for larger ones.
Larger shipyards will leverage more capabilities and extend these capabilities within their enterprise architecture and AI initiatives. Smaller shipyards can use out of the box capabilities of the same platform with minimum configuration changes.
For lead shipyards working to demanding deadlines, knowing that their subcontractors can use the same tools reduces risk, removes friction and enables the benefits to be felt without delay.