A Way out of the Crisis

Das Wirtschaftsmagazin für Ingenieure Originally published in: 6/2009 Intelligente Methoden, Prozesse und Technologien www.economic-engineering.de PLM: A way out of the crisis Meyer Werft Picture: Picture: HIGHLIGHTMARITIM EXTRA The “AidaLuna” leaves the Meyer Werft shipyard Picture: Meyer Werft Meyer Picture: PLM: A way out of the crisis kes them susceptible to the financial After enjoying a number of boom years, German shipbuilders are also consequences of the crisis. The capital feeling the impact of the worldwide economic crisis. A decline in new cover of most companies is relatively orders and an increase in order cancellations pose a problem for the thin, which means that the financial dif- shipbuilding industry. IT experts recommend using the crisis as an ficulties of one or two shipyards can quickly spread to them. opportunity to improve competitiveness. Data integration and data One possible way out of the crisis is to communication in the development networks concerned with the assume more development responsibili- ship development process in particular still offer significant rationali- ty, which is gradually leading to the for- zation potential. By MICHAEL WENDENBURG mation of hierarchical structures in the shipbuilding supplier industry similar to those in the automotive and aircraft in- ith a global market share of ap- the answers they find to the technical dustries: “System providers with a high Wproximately three percent in and organizational challenges posed by level of technological competence are terms of total tonnage produced, ship- distributed ship development. The com- better equipped to weather a crisis”, building in Germany would not appear petition in low-cost countries is not the pointed out Jörg Mutschler, managing to be a major economic force on the only threat to suppliers in the shipbuil- director of the VDMA’s Marine and world stage. But this impression is mis- ding industry. Supply bottlenecks and ri- Offshore Supplier Equipment Industries leading: Measured by the number of sing prices for high-quality materials, as working group, at this year’s Shipbuil- ships and offshore platforms equipped, well as lack of young design and service ding Forum. The forum, which is organi- German suppliers in the shipbuilding in- engineers, are threatening the competi- zed by Darmstadt-headquartered PRO- dustry and maritime technology sector tiveness of an industry which in Germa- STEP AG, has become an important ve- assume a leading position worldwide, ny comprises approximately 400 predo- nue for the industry to meet. As a spe- coming in just behind their Japanese minantly small and mid-sized companies cialist for product data integration and competitors. Whether or not they will who employ a workforce of about communication in cross-enterprise de- be able to hold on to this position in the 70,000. Their small and mid-sized struc- velopment processes, PROSTEP helps current economic crisis and in the face ture allows suppliers to provide innova- shipbuilders develop the technological of growing competition from Asia and tive, customer-oriented solutions for competence required for product life- other non-EU countries will depend on technically complex ships but also ma- cycle management (PLM). II ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN: ECONOMIC ENGINEERING 6/2009 / page 53-55 / www.economic-engineering.de in response to communication errors. for ship development. In addition, servi- The supplied information is either un- ces such as OpenDESC®.com, which suitable for the task in question, unin- provides them with support for quali- terpretable, incomplete or incorrect. In ty-assured data conversion, thus allo- addition, the parties involved often fail wing them to avoid having to maintain to understand who needs the informa- all the various CAD systems, are a gre- tion in the process and when. Hetero- at help. The CAD landscape in the ship- geneous IT systems, a lack of appropri- building industry is relatively heteroge- ate interfaces and manual processes neous since no one system can satisfy mean that data communication in de- all the requirements, and the shipyards velopment projects is a time-consu- cannot always tell their suppliers which ming task that is prone to errors. Shi- tools they ought to use. Alongside the pyards, shipping companies and sup- special systems for hull form design pliers are therefore looking for solu- and analysis or the vessel's steel struc- tions that will allow them to reduce ture, the machinery, piping, equipment the time and effort involved in commu- and outfitting components are often Picture: PROSTEP AG PROSTEP Picture: nication and use their sparse manpo- designed using leading 3D CAD sy- Jörg Mutschler from the VDMA at this yea- wer more efficiently. According to stems such as Catia or NX, which are r’s Shipbuilding Forum, which is organized PROSTEP, there are three main starting only loosely incorporated in the exi- by PROSTEP points for accelerating data communi- sting system landscape and established cation in the shipbuilding industry: processes. One of the main require- Work intensive with a highly ■ improving the quality and compatibi- ments to be satisfied by the interface complex supply chain lity of the original data that PROSTEP developed together ■ consolidating all the data relevant to with Blohm + Voss Nordseewerke in Building ships is a work-intensive busi- development with the correspon- Emden, a shipbuilding company belon- ness based on a highly complex supply ding product structure information ging to ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems chain in a central data management plat- (TKMS), was therefore the ability to Similar to the aerospace industry, there form transfer the NX-based outfitting design are a large number of specialist sup- ■ harmonizing and automating the ac- data to the Tribon M3 Hull steel con- pliers and sub-contractors who contri- tual data exchange processes. struction package, where it can be used bute up to 70 or 80 percent of the va- How and in what order the individual for the subsequent CNC-based manu- lue added depending on the type of measures are implemented ultimately facturing processes. ship involved – the proportion is by na- depends on the priorities that the In principle, it can be assumed that the ture higher in the case of a cruise liner company in question has specified variety of systems and thus the need compared with a container ship. when formulating its PLM strategy. for conversion will continue to grow in As rule, over 100 different companies With the help of a standardized refe- order to meet the growing require- are involved in the development and rence model approaches for the proce- ments in ship development. Shipbuil- construction of a ship, and they all have dures involved in PLM projects like the ders are therefore now thinking about to carefully coordinate their work with one developed by PROSTEP, the most how they can put virtual reality (VR) one another to ensure that all the important areas of activity for projects technologies to good use, for example, components, such as machinery, outfit- of this type can be defined relatively to examine the ergonomics of the in- ting and accommodation components, quickly. terior fittings or the wheelchair-acces- are available on time and fit together sible layout of escape routes. Wide- perfectly. There is little time available Data quality: a work in progress spread use of VR is currently being for changes since it usually takes only a hampered by the high overhead invol- year for a vessel to evolve from initial Many of the problems with communi- ved in converting and preparing the design to launch. Coordinating the va- cation in distributed ship development CAD data. rious tasks involved in ship develop- projects originate from an inadequate ment is extremely time consuming. At level of data quality. When the data is Integration platform for the present, some employees spend up to generated, the quality of the data will shipbuilding industry 50 percent of their working time pro- determine how smoothly collaboration curing, preparing and documenting in- later in the development process will The most important prerequisite for formation and performing other indi- function. If the data is inconsistent and efficient data communication in the rect tasks, as revealed by a study con- exhibits a low level of quality, it will be shipbuilding industry is the consistent ducted by the Center of Marine Infor- impossible to convert and transfer it. management and versioning of all the mation Systems at the University of Therefore, on the one hand, companies data relevant to development in a uni- Rostock. Between the shipyard and en- in the shipbuilding industry need help form data management environment gineering office alone, approximately implementing methods that guarantee so that the most current information 800 communication processes take the creation of models that are well su- can be made available to everyone in- place over a period of a little more ited to data exchange and, on the other volved in the process at any time. To than a year after a contract has been hand, they need efficient interfaces bet- the extent to which suppliers become concluded, and 80 percent of these are ween the various CAD systems used system suppliers who assume respon- III Business + digitalPLANT Engineering sibility for an increasingly large proportion of the development activities, they have to communicate increasingly lar- ger and more complex amounts of data with the shipyards. The exchange of the CAD data is no longer enough. If this data is to be efficiently proces- sed, the recipient needs structure information, attributes and other metadata normally stored in a product data management (PDM) system. It may be the case that this metadata also needs to be made available to partners who themselves are not yet using a PDM system. Unlike other industries, cross-system PDM systems are only slowly Voss Blohm + Picture: establishing themselves in the shipbuil- Luxury yachts made in Germany are in great demand.

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