Transforming the Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Project Environment

In April 2008, NSRP awarded the project entitled "Customization of Web-Based Planning and Production Engineering Technologies to Support Integrated Shipyard Work Flow," a collaborative research project that included Bollinger Shipyards and Atlantic Marine-Mobil. The purpose of the project was to develop and validate a project management approach to shipbuilding and ship maintenance through the delivery of a web-based production and engineering management tool tailored to the needs of this industry along with a reliable, exportable implementation process using planning and production engineering methodologies. This project was designed to enable shipyards to achieve reduction in project costs and cycle time through project standardization and the ability to perform rapid replanning while maintaining align-ment of all project stakeholders in real time. The project enabled the shipyards to bring forth quantifiable improvement opportunities that reflected the biggest impact on project delivery. This paper shares insight into the key findings derived through this transformational body of research, as well as provide an understanding of the robust process used to implement the shipyard-specific web-based project solutions in ship-building and ship repair project environments. The paper also provides a quantification and appreciation of the resulting cost benefits experienced by each of the participating shipyards. New construction programs in each of the shipyards enabled real-time metrics to be captured, illustrating the achievement of cost reduction opportunities resulting from this project.