Why Ships are like floating Buildings — from a PLM Perspective
Complex, more complex, ships
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) methods offer an efficient approach to managing huge amounts of data throughout the complex lifecycle of a vessel. CONTACT Software is part of the European Research Project SEUS to provide shipyards with optimal support for digitization along the entire lifecycle of shipbuilding projects — from design and engineering, through prefabrication and production, to maintenance and operation.
Today common ship design data management solutions include multiple databases and servers to manage design and engineering data. Facing common concerns in maintenance and usability. Challenges arise from disparate information silos among stakeholders, requiring substantial coordination efforts and resulting in inconsistent data and a heightened risk of errors.
Effectively managing shipbuilding data entails handling millions of parts and assemblies, documenting thousands of changes throughout construction, and ensuring that product information remains accessible to globally distributed stakeholders for decades. Moreover, ships are constructed under intense cost pressures, necessitating concurrent design and building processes. These processes must undergo rigorous qualification through security and quality class programs. Additionally, sustainability initiatives present further design and cost challenges. Globalization redistributes market shares globally, propelled by economic efficiency. Consequently, ships must meet increasingly stringent criteria for safety, sustainability, intelligence, and adaptability.
Ensuring seamless access to relevant information at the right time and place is crucial for the success of shipyards in this evolving landscape. With the emergence of concepts like digital twins, digital threads, and PLM, more sophisticated design approaches in terms of integrated synthesis of early ship design to detailed design and ship production are in focus of PLM vendors. PLM systems facilitate enhanced integration of data across various lifecycle stages and foster vertical coordination among different stakeholders. The potential of PLM systems and future hopes of shipbuilders cover not only product data but also database management, modelling tools and process management [1].
Comparison to other industries
While PLM is commonly associated with managing the lifecycle of products, in the shipping industry, it is often referred to as process lifecycle management. Unlike industries such as automotive or aviation, where products follow a standardized process from research and design to mass production, shipbuilding involves creating unique vessels tailored to specific commercial requirements. Even among sister vessels, there is limited design information that can be directly transferred. Moreover, shipyards often face pressure to maintain continuous activity, leading to situations where design and construction may overlap. Unlike other industries, where production follows a more linear trajectory, shipbuilding projects exhibit a fundamentally different dynamic. This underscores the need for specialized software and processes tailored to the complexities of the shipping industry. [2]
To highlight and understand the primary challenges in shipbuilding, CONTACT Research has undertaken a comparative analysis between the shipbuilding industry and other sectors. Our comparison focuses on both the product and the process, as the intricacies of both necessitate consideration within PLM. Presented here is a simplified overview that provides insight into the intricate landscape of product and process-related parameters affecting PLM operations. From our point of view product complexity can be described with the following criteria:
Management focus: Usually where data sovereignty lies. It can be project or product-focused.
Design & Production approach: How product design and refinement tasks are performed. Concurrent approaches have more parallel engineering and execution in the same time. Sequential approaches do not.
Product Scale: Product components per variant/product in tens of thousands varies between low, medium (1–150) and high (250–1000).
Product variants: A classification of the use of variant management assesses whether variant management is used little or not at all.
Part reuse: A classification of the reuse of product components distinguishes between low, medium and high frequency.
Production method: The method which products are designed and delivered for customers Engineering-to-order (ETO), Configure-to-order (CTO) or Select-to-order (STO).
Process complexity can be described as:
Product changes: A measure of how many changes occur during design and also during production. It varies from low opportunity to medium and high number of changes.
Collaboration requirements: The need to collaborate with other parties and tools can also be low, medium or high.
Compliance & regulation needs: The need to comply with regulations varies between low, medium and high.
Project Management Approach: How tasks are planned and executed. These approaches can be very strict or conservative long engineering models. In contrast, a project management approach can be change-driven or more agile.
In the upcoming table, we assess these outlined criteria and contrast the shipbuilding industry with the automotive, mechanical, and construction sectors, drawing upon expert experience and literature insights into shipbuilding processes.
At first glance, the shipbuilding and construction sectors are similar in our comparison. They both have high requirements for the fulfilment of regulations and the need for collaboration. The product complexity is also high, and the method of manufacturing one-of-a-kind products is the same. But shipbuilding also has similarities for instance with mechanical sectors like simultaneous engineering or with globally distributed site production as in automotive industries.
Further, the comparison also shows that the product and process complexity described at the beginning is very high compared to other industries, without wanting to underestimate the complexity in parts of other industries; for example, variant management in the automotive industry can sometimes be very complex. A nice comparison of these facts was created by PROSTEP, as shown in the following illustration [3]:
Conclusion
The shipbuilding industry stands out as an exceptional and singular sector. It incorporates distinctive characteristics from manufacturing and construction fields. Positioned between craft production (Engineer-to-Order) and continuous production (Assembly-to-order), it cannot simply adopt best practices from either industry. The shipbuilding industry is marked by several distinctive characteristics [4]:
Temporary Multi-Organization: Shipbuilding projects typically involve collaboration among multiple organizations, often formed temporarily for the duration of a specific project. This complex network of stakeholders brings together diverse expertise and resources to accomplish project goals efficiently.
Site Production: Unlike many other industries that have centralized manufacturing facilities, shipbuilding often takes place directly at the construction site. This on-site production approach necessitates careful coordination of materials, equipment, and manpower to ensure smooth workflow and timely completion.
One-of-a-Kind Nature of Products: Each vessel produced in the shipbuilding industry is unique, tailored to specific requirements and specifications. This bespoke nature of shipbuilding requires flexibility and adaptability throughout the design and construction phases to accommodate varying customer needs and regulatory standards.
Regulatory Intervention: The shipbuilding industry is subject to stringent regulatory frameworks governing vessel design, construction, and operation. Compliance with these regulations is crucial for ensuring the safety, environmental sustainability, and operational efficiency of maritime assets. As such, regulatory compliance is a significant consideration throughout the shipbuilding process.
Another significant aspect of PLM capabilities is underscored by PROSTEP, which surveyed shipbuilders to identify the essential PLM capabilities required in their industry. The findings indicate that PLM enhances value for shipbuilders by facilitating master data management, fostering collaboration with suppliers and partners, and managing engineering change processes effectively. PLM systems ensure that product data is accessible to non-CAD users and downstream processes, serving as a centralized source of truth. [3]
PLM vendors such as CONTACT Software must consider this characteristic when developing a shipbuilding platform. Stay tuned to see how the saga unfolds…
References & Further Information:
[1] Andrade, S., Monteiro, T. & Gaspar, H., 2015. Product Life Cycle Management in Ship Design: From Concept to Decommissioning in a Virtual Environment.
[2] CADMATIC article: From Document driven to data driven Shipbuilding with PLM, https://www.cadmatic.com/en/resources/articles/using-plm-to-unlock-shipbuildings-digital-potential/
[3] PROSTEP Shipbuilding PLM Insights: Episode 1 — The Interaction of CAD and PDM in Shipbuilding, https://www.prostep.com/veranstaltungen/prostep-shipbuilding-plm-insights
[4] Emblemsvåg, J., 2014, Lean Project Planning in Shipbuilding. Journal of Ship Production and Design, p. 79–88.
About CONTACT Research. CONTACT Research is a dynamic research group dedicated to collaborating with innovative minds from the fields of science and industry. Our primary mission is to develop cutting-edge solutions for the engineering and manufacturing challenges of the future. We undertake projects that encompass applied research, as well as technology and method innovation. An independent corporate unit within the CONTACT Software Group, we foster an environment where innovation thrives.
