Every modern shipbuilder has, to a certain degree, to work with professionals in different parts of the country, or the world. As a result, distributed teams are becoming increasingly common to see within shipbuilding organizations. Finding a way to ensure that teams in disparate locations, with different skills and abilities, can work on the same project and manage information regardless of format is key to making it possible to focus on shipbuilding.
Even when a project takes place in a single location, being able to share and reuse already completed blocks, assemblies, and other completed work with other ships in a series allows your organization to tackle one of the toughest challenges in shipbuilding. Transferring data across hulls and projects can fundamentally improve the traditional workflows in place.
A tool that effectively has those capabilities, and makes them easily accessible, allows an organization to:
- Work in sync on an entire project or model from multiple locations.
- Reuse entire blocks or systems along with the associated assembly information and production drawings.
- Control who can make changes to the model or production output.
Having granular control over how teams interact with each other and the rest of an organization, no matter where they are in the world, brings the benefits of shipbuilding’s global nature and mitigates the risks.
Keys to an effective distributed team solution
Securely Manage Distributed Projects
Control over which parts of the project are distributed to which site by block, discipline, or user allows for secure, managed control over collaborative projects.
Lower IT Overhead
Allowing users to manage how they work in a distributed environment reduces the requirements placed on IT. A solution that is disconnected also lowers the infrastructure requirements placed on an organization, allowing large and small organizations in both mature and emerging markets to leverage the capabilities.
Reduce Engineering Hours
Reusing existing work, and the underlying design intent, on new designs, sister ships, or within an ongoing project can significantly reduce the engineering man-hours required.
Reduce Errors and Rework
Reuse not only lowers the effort required to complete a design, it also reduces errors and rework as the existing work has likely been built and checked in the past to a degree that a new design cannot have been.
Standardize Production
Reusing standard blocks, systems or standards to a significant degree reduces the variation of designs seen on the shop floor and allows for a greater degree of optimization in production processes.
Leverage Experience
By reusing existing designs that have been created or approved by more experienced engineers, junior designers or draftsmen can be more effective sooner.
WorkShare Transfer
One of the greatest challenges in shipbuilding today is managing changes across a series of hulls. When collaboration across organizations is involved, the challenge of managing those changes is compounded, even when working on a single hull.
With the new, built from the ground up, WorkShare Transfer feature, you can save time by selecting only the items you need and transferring them directly to the other project, allowing you to re-use the exact work required on-the-fly. Now, you’re able to transfer parts, production drawings, assembly information, systems, and profile plots between projects.
Updating and synchronizing projects to facilitate change order requests now takes just minutes, in part because there is no need to disconnect users from the project to do so.
Transfer is already being incorporated into critical workflows on some of the most complex classes of ships. As a result, these firms are minimizing rework and producing deliverables more quickly thanks to their access to this fast and efficient sister ship solution.
WorkShare Project
WorkShare Project allows work on a single ShipConstructor project model at multiple locations. This is accomplished by using technology to merge distributed design back into a single 3D project model.
WorkShare Design
WorkShare Design allows portions of a 3D project model, including assembly sequences, related production drawings, and the underlying design intent to be captured and reused in another ShipConstructor project.
WorkShare Model
WorkShare Model allows you to transfer individual parts across different projects. This allows you to replicate elements of the 3D model at granular level of detail or share those elements to necessary stakeholders.