SPECIAL REPORT Scott Raeside from SSI examines a potential future for the shipbuilding process.
Automation in shipbuilding is ready for a great leap forward Manual intervention is still relied upon to drive machinery on the production floor, but intelligent 3D ship models can automate the process. Scott Raeside, Product Business Analyst at SSI, explores the topic in this Special Report for Inside Marine. he ability to free up highly skilled
T
For decades there has been a depen-
workers to focus on complex pro-
dence on manually created outputs, which
duction tasks rather than tedious
in turn drive manual tasks for the production
and menial ones is a major win for any
team. This can mean updating multiple
shipyard. In which case, why have so
drawings based on time-consuming work-
few shipyards been able to embrace this
flows to get the output data back on to
innovation? Part of the reason lies within
the shopfloor, or manually measuring and
the detailing and management of the
marking up plate from a 2D drawing.
production information generated to
As an example, opening thousands of
control shop floor machines, which can
spool and assembly drawings, annotating,
be time consuming and error prone.
and validating them is slow and tedious.
Automated robotic cutting, bending
Such tasks represent a large time burn for
and welding of steel components in
designers and as a result, a more expen-
ship construction has been possible for
sive ship design process.
years. Likewise, reducing the amount
Often the answer proposed to some of
of time designers must spend interacting
these manual workflow issues is to incorpo-
with mainly 2D production documentation
rate third-party software – in addition to
or manipulating file formats allows
the core 3D package used for ship design –
both for better accuracy and more
which in turn may create bigger changes to
efficiency in creating and revising the
shipyard workflows to ensure compatibility.
model, as well as automating the manu-
On projects where schedules are aggres-
facturing process.
sive and budgets are tight, this degree of upheaval is a non-starter.
Bridging these two realities
Removing the need to introduce third-
The level of complexity in every phase
party software, or reducing the amount
of construction and the workflow of
of user interactions needed to create an
a shipyard will always vary, but the
output, by driving this information directly
desire to incorporate automation where
from the 3D digital model software is an
possible remains constant.
exciting move in the right direction.
48 Inside marine