Production planning in shipbuilding is characterized by a poor overview of the planning status at the different planning levels and a low-level feedback that is provided late by production. As a result, delays often occur because problems are identified too late and planners have a difficult time finding alternative production paths. The shipyard expects increased digitalization of the processes and the implementation of new tools for anticipatory production planning and control to shorten lead times for the individual departments and result in more efficient use of the infrastructure and available resources.

The aim of the ProProS project is to create a digital twin for the shipyard’s manufacturing and assembly processes that can be used for status monitoring and for optimizing shipbuilding. Together with the WZL’s manufacturing experts, who are responsible for developing the production technology logic, we will be mapping the planning data from the target process (product structure, work orders, assembly sequence, scheduling, etc.) in an end-to-end data model, so that it can be compared in real time with the actual data from production and assembly.

The joint project has an overall budget of 3.2 million euros and is sponsored by the BMWi. It is coordinated by the Lürssen shipyard group and is divided into different phases. The first two milestones involve mapping the material flow in order to recognize where the parts to be manufactured are located and to integrate the target data from planning. This data is then to be compared with the actual data in future milestones in order to detect deviations and adapt the planning data if necessary. The project will run until 2022. The project partners are planning to present the first interim results at COMPIT 2021.©