Archive for the ‘Shipbuilding’ Category
Sunday, September 26th, 2021
Downstream processes in shipbuilding require early and bidirectional integration between the PDM and ERP systems used in product development, production planning and production. This was one of the key messages of the third episode of our PROSTEP SHIPBUILDING PLM INSIGHTS webinar series, in which we presented different PDM-ERP integration scenarios to participants.
Product development and realization requirements differ in all industries, which is why companies generally use different IT systems to manage product structures, 3D models, drawings, etc., and material data, routings and manufacturing bills of material. Shipyards are no exception. However, they have special requirements for the adaptability of PDM-ERP integrations because manufacturing processes vary from shipyard to shipyard and sometimes from site to site. In addition, many shipyards use homegrown ERP systems because commercial solutions did not initially cover all their needs.
The main challenge in PDM-ERP integration in shipbuilding is to synchronize the different structures of engineering and manufacturing BOM (Bill of Material) in parallel and bidirectionally, as PLM Consultant Nils Sonnenberg said. He explained the different integration requirements to participants, using the example of purchased and in-house manufactured parts. “We need the development data early in the ERP system to use it for supplier communication, for example, and to better estimate delivery times.” Design options for parts manufactured in-house would also need to be regularly checked against the master record in the ERP system to ensure that the user is only using approved parts.
How shipyards should handle the challenge of needing multiple MBOMs for different locations was one of the interesting questions in the webinar’s closing Q&A session. In other industries, companies use the option of creating a generic MBOM already in the PDM system and only then transferring it to the sites’ ERP systems, Sonnenberg said. But there can be no general answer to the question because it depends, among other things, on whether the company in question has the MBOMs created at the sites on site or at a central location.
On the other hand, the question posed by another participant as to what the ideal combination of PDM and ERP systems for shipbuilding is, and whether shipyards and their design partners should use the same systems, could be answered clearly: There is no such thing as the ideal combination. More important than the question of which systems to use is how to integrate them so that collaboration works. Thanks to powerful integration platforms, this is no longer a technical problem. Helping companies integrate their heterogeneous IT system landscapes is one of our core competencies.
In total, more than 50 interested parties attended the two live presentations on PDM-ERP integration. If you missed the third episode of the webinar, you can watch the recording here. In the fourth episode, at the request of the participants, we will hold a demo session about episode 1-3 topics. We will inform you about the date and agenda in time if you register right here.
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Friday, September 24th, 2021
OpenPDM supports AUSTAL Shipyard’s PLM Integration – AUSTAL, Australia`s global shipbuilder and one of the world’s leading shipyards for naval and commercial high-speed vessels, is currently undertaking a modernization of their IT-landscape. After jointly developing AUSTAL’s PLM strategy and roadmap in 2020, AUSTAL and PROSTEP continue their collaboration and launched a new project in June 2021 to develop AUSTAL’s future digital enterprise platform based on PROSTEP’s OpenPDM.
In order to achieve seamless information flow between AUSTAL´s enterprise data management systems including PDM/PLM, ERP, DWH, and PPS, AUSTAL and PROSTEP jointly launched an integration project in June 2021. AUSTAL’s digital transformation already includes the implementation of a new ERP system and has just started the improvement of existing PDM capabilities. Therefore, the call for traceable and robust connection of the various databases as part of AUSTAL’s digitalization activities was just a consequent next step to consider.
The Australian shipbuilding experts were looking for a suitable solution providing data federation across company borders, IT systems and domains while supporting transaction, security, and status monitoring according to their needs. The OpenPDM platform together with its marine & offshore specific spin-off OpenPDM SHIP addresses these requirements and provides built-in PLM semantics optimized for shipyard processes on top. For AUSTAL it is crucial to have a scalable and robust integration solution that can be operated and maintained by their own IT department. Therefore, they decided to start building their digital enterprise platform based on OpenPDM.
Following the principle “think big, start small, scale fast” the first step on the way to AUSTAL’s future digital enterprise platform is the implementation of use cases addressing data exchange between design and resource management.
This approach has several advantages for AUSTAL. The new capabilities can be used productively right away, robustness of processes is ensured and by involving AUSTAL´s IT experts in an early stage, they will get trained to run, maintain and enhance the integration platform afterwards.
As an example, purchase parts currently stored in a legacy system will be transferred to the new ERP system. During the transfer from the legacy system into ERP, the purchase parts get augmented with meta-information from an inhouse developed data warehouse system. Successfully transferred to the ERP system, the enriched part data will be used by several downstream processes including material requisition and procurement or internal disposition as stock parts.
To specify the future development stages in according to the shipyard needs, PROSTEP will drive the implementation in close collaboration with AUSTAL during the whole project. After the successful integration of the PDM and ERP systems, the implementation of drawing transfer, product-structure transfer or operating cutting work orders are in scope. Further on, the integration of additional systems is envisaged. From enterprise planning to payroll systems various solutions are in focus to be integrated into AUSTAL´s new digital enterprise platform.
Andrew Malcolm, Chief Digital Officer (CDO) at AUSTAL said: “With OpenPDM we found the integration solution that meets our requirements today and enables us to scale as we go and adopt to future needs as they arise. In this way we are prepared for the challenges to come, enabling AUSTAL to successfully master the digital transformation.”
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Thursday, May 13th, 2021
During the last year, PROSTEP gave a boost to the development of the OpenPDM SHIP integration platform. The functionality was expanded in several areas, such as interfaces with CADMATIC and ShipConstructor or NAPA and NESTIX conversions. Continuous development of expertise in shipbuilding-specific software solutions remained high on our agenda.
OpenPDM SHIP is an integration platform designed specifically for the shipbuilding industry that connects shipbuilding-specific CAD/PDM/PLM and ERP solutions and mechanical CAD applications via standardized connectors. The product was launched as development evolved from numerous customer projects, where we tackled similar needs from the shipyards. The COVID pandemic slowed down the progress of customer projects but created a unique opportunity for development to leap forward and expand the functionality of the solution.
New connectors to CADMATIC, AVEVA E3D
OpenPDM SHIP connector with CADMATIC WebAPI offers new opportunities and more flexibility for data access. Besides outfitting model data access, it enables hull data accessibility for the CADMATIC Hull COS version. Additional functionality was added for CADMATIC eShare connector to integrate 3D visualization and collaboration platform with data stored in PDM systems, such as approval, procurement, or delivery status information or other data.
Another significant development currently under construction is the new connector to Everything3D (E3D), the successor system to AVEVA Marine. With a customer already using the system productively, we are working on an OpenPDM SHIP E3D connector that will initially cover the transfer of the outfitting data. Further steps will expand the interface to support E3D Hull in the future.
Additional functionality for CAD conversions
We have made significant progress in the native generation of ShipConstructor data from third-party applications such as NAPA. A corresponding API from SSI, which is still under development and is constantly being extended, enables generating or regenerating parts of the hull or steel structure natively in ShipConstructor.
OpenPDM SHIP supports the mapping of data and structures from ShipConstructor for production engineering with NESTIX, which is used at numerous shipyards for planning the cutting and welding work packages. Previously released functionality for the CAD/CAM process chain worked consistently between AVEVA Marine and NESTIX.
The agile approach to continuous development
The nature of OpenPDM SHIP lies in integration capability between many shipbuilding-specific CAx systems and PDM solutions. It requires deep expertise in exchange formats and integration technology and close cooperation with CAD software development companies. Keeping internal knowledge at a high level is one of the priorities for PROSTEP’s R&D teams.
The robustness and quality of OpenPDM SHIP have further improved because the development of the integration platform for the shipbuilding industry is now more closely aligned with the general development of the OpenPDM platform. We synchronize the sprints of SHIP development with the sprints of the general OpenPDM development. Our integration platform thus fits seamlessly into the product family.
By Matthias Grau
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Wednesday, March 31st, 2021
PROSTEP’s new series on SHIPBUILDING PLM INSIGHTS was launched on March 16. It was a successful start to the series: Around 150 participants watched the first episode, which focused on the added value of PDM and PLM for users of shipbuilding-specific CAD systems. In addition, our shipbuilding experts explained how shipyards can rebuild their PLM architectures more effectively.
The series is aimed at maritime industry professionals and IT experts who want to know more about how they can use PDM and PLM to manage growing product complexity, shorten time-to-market, and meet the more demanding requirements of customers and classification societies. Here, PDM means a specific application, while PLM describes a broader concept that can be implemented with different applications.
The first episode kicked off with a market overview of the challenges that shipyards face in digitalization. This overview was based on intensive discussions we have had with more than 40 shipyards worldwide over the past few years, from which we extracted their pain points. Pressure to act is caused by the increasing complexity of shipbuilding projects, the many changes to each ship and the growing effort required to manage requirements, documents and certificates.
The market situation is also characterized by smaller shipyards merging into larger groups. Often, post-merger integration is complicated by outdated IT system landscapes, different legacy systems at the various sites, and the multitude of Excel spreadsheets still used to manage non-CAD data. As a result, companies have little foundation to implement complex new requirements.
The most discussed topic among shipyards is what additional benefits a PDM system can offer them if they already use a shipbuilding-specific CAD system. For this reason, we have made this topic the focus of the first episode. Our colleague Jan Bitomsky explained to the participants the special features of shipbuilding-specific CAD systems, which are the reason why most shipyards do not have a PDM. They cover many PDM functions through integrated CAD data management and their focus on the shipbuilding CAx process chain. But just not all of them, which is why there are so many Excel spreadsheets.
PDM systems first caught on in other industries where management of mechanical CAD files was a key requirement. Over time, however, they have been extended to include PLM capabilities such as materials management, document management, product structure management, or partner collaboration, which are also of interest to shipbuilders but are missing from shipbuilding-specific CAD systems. Most importantly, they lack powerful change management, which is one of the key functions of any PDM system.
Combining the PLM capabilities of a shipbuilding CAD system with a PDM system therefore offers enormous added value, as Bitomsky pointed out. There is then only one source of truth. Document management is perhaps related to that with change management. In the product structure, you can see the CAD data, but also other data. And one can always trace which data was sent to which supplier and when.
But how does one get to this single source of truth? In a second topic, Bitomsky explained to participants how they can use the enterprise architecture management approach to develop a PLM architecture that is aligned with their business requirements. These requirements are more demanding in shipbuilding than in other industries because not only the products are very complex, but also the business processes from the time of sale to delivery. This is the reason why there is still no best practice solution for PLM architecture in shipbuilding.
PROSTEP supports shipyards in identifying the bottlenecks in the existing information flows based on the business objects and in determining the required capabilities for their future PLM architecture. An architecture that can combine shipbuilding-specific CAD systems, PDM and ERP systems, for example.
At the end of the first episode, participants were allowed to vote on the focus of the next episode. It will take place in May and will revolve around the topic of Collaboration in Shipbuilding. You can watch the recording of the first episode here. If you would like to receive information about the second episode, sign up here.
By Matthias Grau
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Monday, January 11th, 2021
Although there is already a large number of projects involving digital twins under way in the maritime industry, there is no common industry-wide understanding of what a digital twin is and no uniform approach to implementation. These are the results of a survey on the digital twin conducted by PROSTEP among shipyards, operators, suppliers and classification societies.
Everyone is talking about the digital twin – even in the shipbuilding industry. But is there something like an industry-wide understanding of what companies in the maritime industry mean by the term “digital twin” and what they expect from it? To find out, PROSTEP conducted a cross-enterprise survey of shipyards, operators, suppliers and classification societies. Due to the novelty of the topic, we assumed that companies have different ideas about the digital twin.
The objective of the survey was to shed light on what companies in the maritime industry understand the digital twin to be, to record the status of current or planned applications and solutions with their potential and challenges, and also to see how the companies organize collaboration in the context of the digital twin. Managers from more than a dozen shipyards, operators, suppliers and classification societies, representing different sectors of the maritime industry from cruise, containers and cargo to naval engineering, navy and public agencies, were surveyed.
For many of those who participated in the survey, the digital twin is at best a vision and at worst a marketing buzzword. It therefore comes as no surprise that there is no common industry-wide understanding of what a digital twin is; there are however some remarkable similarities. Almost without exception, respondents across all segments of the industry associate the digital twin with the digitalization of their product or the asset to be operated but not with the digitalization of the production systems. Almost all respondents also believe that this digital twin does not end when the product is handed over to the customer but also accompanies the operating phase.
On the whole, it appears that respondents from the supplier segment have somewhat of a head start over other segments of the industry when it comes to the level of maturity of digital twin projects. Many are in the pilot stage or are already being used productively. It is also the suppliers who are calling the loudest for standards that will enable them to integrate their digital representations with other systems in the overall system that is a “vessel” and exploit the potential that the digital twin offers.
The companies have different reasons for addressing the topic of the digital twin. From an engineering perspective, primary focus is placed on optimizing designs based on insights gained during operation, the early testing of functions and providing support for downstream business processes with the help of 3D product models. In the operating phase, improved planning and remote support for maintenance and inspection tasks as well as the optimization of operating parameters are key drivers for projects currently underway. Initial use cases in manufacturing include the virtual approval of work, the early training of personnel in the construction phase of a vessel, and the optimization of manufacturing processes.
For the majority (over 70 percent) of the companies surveyed, improving service quality is the most important potential offered by the digital twin; this is followed by supporting new business models and improving the development process. As far as suppliers in particular are concerned, the main benefit is the ability to avoid subsequent costs and work resulting from development errors. For operators, on the other hand, the digital twin offers significant potential for increasing capacity utilization, reducing operating costs and improving sustainability, e.g. by reducing emissions.
Increasing collaboration in the context of implementing and using digital twins is seen throughout the industry as posing the greatest challenge – along with a lack of standards and the availability of appropriate models, which are of concern to suppliers in particular. With the exception of a few suppliers, the vast majority of the manufacturing companies surveyed do not work together with partners on digital twin projects at all or do so rarely. Most operators, on the other hand, already use digital representations of their ships to optimize operation of the vessels together with partners and customers, and they access digital service and maintenance offerings from partners.
In principle, all the companies are in favor of a higher level of collaboration when it comes to implementing and using the digital twin. Many, however, have reservations when it comes to protecting their intellectual property and see contractual ambiguities with regard to digital content. This means that every company is trying to exploit the potential of the digital twin with their own benefit in mind. There is also no uniform approach to dealing with this topic in the individual segments of the industry, and a different approach is taken for each application scenario. There is a risk that the digital twin projects will lead to the creation of new data silos.
The results of the survey provide a basis for recommending action that can be taken by companies in the maritime industry. Perhaps the most important is collaborating with other companies in the context of implementing and using digital twins. Companies that actively collaborate with partners are usually able to implement their projects faster.
We recommend that companies tackle concrete projects that offer economic value added. Collect the data you need for the project at hand but avoid creating new data silos by linking the data that you have collected according to clearly defined rules. The digital components for the digital twin are available in most companies in the form of models, data and IT systems. You just need to clarify how you can best exploit this potential to meet your business needs. Our many years of experience with digitalization initiatives in the shipbuilding industry means that we are in a position to help you do this.
By Lars Wagner
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Sunday, December 13th, 2020
Finnish shipyard MEYER Turku, part of MEYER Group and one of the world’s leading builder of cruise ships, ferries and special ships, plans for the future of shipbuilding. In a Proof of Concept (PoC) led by PROSTEP, and in cooperation with TECHNIA the shipyard examined the advantages of model-based, visually supported work planning using DELMIA software in the production process.
MEYER Turku’s aim is to optimize planning and control in production and thus to reduce the production time of individual ships. This requires a restructuring of the historically grown IT landscape, which is strongly adapted to the shipyard’s specific needs. The Finnish engineers use the shipbuilding specific CAD system AVEVA Marine for basic and detailed design of the steel structures (Hull). For work planning and control, production-relevant data is then transferred to NESTIX, a MES tool perfectly adapted to the existing production processes. The software however cannot directly use 3D design models, which makes data consistency difficult and impedes visual work planning.
When looking for a future planning software for manufacturing, the project managers in Finland did not need to look far afield: DELMIA is part of Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE already in use as a PLM platform at the sister shipyards in Papenburg and Rostock. In view of the ongoing harmonization of the IT landscapes at the different shipyard locations, the idea of a practical test of the Dassault software in Turku was therefore obvious.
Another obvious choice was to cooperate with PROSTEP’s shipbuilding experts, who have been supporting MEYER for years as system-neutral consultants in the integration of its CAx and PLM landscapes. They took the lead in the project team that was to carry out the evaluation of DELMIA’s Out Of The Box (OOTB) functions from a user perspective. With a view to later productive use, the aim was to clarify whether DELMIA could provide all the necessary functions, how much customizing would be required and how the software could support closer integration of hull and outfitting design in the future.
As part of the PoC, PROSTEP’s experts developed a concept for converting and transferring the geometry and metadata from AVEVA Marine to 3DEXPERIENCE and coordinated the activities of Dassault partner TECHNIA, which was responsible for testing the DELMIA software and introducing users to the new, integrative way of working. “The cooperation between PROSTEP, TECHNIA and the users at MEYER Turku was very targeted and worked perfectly. We were able to carry out the project in time and budget and achieved all expected results” praised Pekka Puranen, CAD/PLM Developer at MEYER Turku.
During the implementation of the project, the two consulting firms combined their core competencies. The experts from TECHNIA contributed their industrial best practices in applying DELMIA, while PROSTEP brought in its experience with shipbuilding processes, PLM as well as agile project management. In addition, PROSTEP also developed the integration to provide AVEVA Marine 3D model data in DELMIA for testing purposes. The company benefited from years of close cooperation with the Finnish shipyard and the proven in-house integration platform OpenPDM SHIP, whose functions were used to implement the integration.
TECHNIA’s experts tested DELMIA together with the work planners at the shipyard so that they could gain practical experience with the model-based approach. It was found that visual work allows them to control the progress of the work much better. In principle, the PoC was able to map the defined use cases with DELMIA OOTB. For productive use, however, the software would have to be customized in order to fulfil all essential requirements of the Finnish shipyard. For example, an automatic time calculation for the planned work is missing as basis for the resource and capacity planning. “If we achieve a similarly high degree of automation with DELMIA, we will need much less time for work planning due to the integrative approach”, concluded Pekka Puranen.
By Nils Sonnenberg
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Monday, December 7th, 2020
The MEYER Group is capable of supporting most of the drawing management related processes with ENOVIA’s standard functionalities. This is the most important finding of a comprehensive proof of concept (PoC) that PROSTEP’s shipbuilding experts carried out for the shipyard. MEYER intends to reduce the time and effort required for customization and updates by using a more standardized PLM solution.
The MEYER Group is one of the leading manufacturers of cruise ships with shipyard locations in Papenburg, Rostock and Turku, Finland. The shipyards use different IT systems for the generation and management of shipbuilding information, which are to be more closely harmonized in future. In Papenburg and Rostock, for example, an AS/400-based mainframe application is still in use for drawing management together with two ENOVIA versions adapted to selected process steps. The applications are highly customized and are gradually running out of maintenance, which is why MEYER wants to replace them with an OOTB (out-of-the-box) solution that can be used throughout the company if possible. The idea of emulating the existing mainframe functionality one-to-one in the new environment was rejected as too costly and not target-oriented.
OOTB in this context means that there is no need to program customizations in a software beyond configurations already provided by the manufacturer in the platform to provide the required features and functions. However, it does not mean that customer-specific adaptations are no longer possible. The advantage for users is that they can use all the necessary features virtually out of the box, while IT can more easily upgrade installed applications to new versions. However, users must accept that the solution may not optimally support all shipbuilding-specific processes they are used to or that modifications to the processes may be necessary.
Therefore, the core question was whether and to what extent the functionality of the OOTB Dassault solution is suitable for the shipbuilding process requirements of the MEYER shipyard. To find out, the company commissioned PROSTEP’s experts to carry out a PoC. As general contractor, they contributed their project management experience and their knowledge of MEYER’s customer-specific processes to the project, while PROSTEP’s partner CENIT provided the necessary ENOVIA expertise. The two companies worked together very efficiently at the PoC over a period of several months, even though shipbuilding was uncharted territory for CENIT employees.
Together with the users at MEYER, the project team analyzed the processes in the legacy systems and defined the use cases to be supported by ENOVIA and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform from scratch. Some of these processes contain automatisms specially tailored to the ship topology. Then the team checked if the processes described can be mapped to the OOTB solution in principle, which standard objects and functions are required for this, how the use of the standard functions affects the processes, and at which points gaps may arise between the previous and the new way of working. The main functions that were considered were project management with milestones and tasks, document management with version management, classification, and the ability to distribute documents to specific people for release.
This methodical procedure met with great acceptance among users. It turned out that they can handle most of the tasks in drawing management with the standard functions. What is missing out-of-the-box is the automatic assignment of ENOVIA objects to the ship topology, i.e. to the block in which the user in question is currently working. There are also a few gaps in the connection to the planning system for the ship development process, which must be closed by developing an interface. In addition, the Excel import must be extended in order to import the drawing lists with thousands of drawings per project into the new environment.
At some points in the process, users will have to change their way of working to be able to use ENOVIA largely OOTB. For example, the software manages drawings or metadata differently than the legacy system, in which they are stored as one object together with planning data such as milestones, deadlines, etc. The project team therefore made the decision to separate the planning aspects from the drawing management and to use the project management functions from the ENOVIA standard. One of the advantages of this separation is that tasks can be defined independently of the drawing, and 3D models and other project-relevant documents can be assigned to the planning data in future. In other areas, the project team was able to provide additional functions from the standard, for example for the ship- or project-specific classification of certain documents as a working standard. This was not possible in this form before.
The focus of the project was expanded several times, so that the project, which was originally designed to last three to four months, ended up taking almost a whole year. As part of the extensions, the project team was commissioned to test the suitability of the OOTB solution also for drawing management at the Turku site, where other IT systems are in use. The PLM experts at PROSTEP concluded that the OOTB solution was basically suitable for this purpose, but recommended prioritizing harmonization for easier implementation.
Following the successful completion of the PoC, MEYER began preparing the implementation in Papenburg. “ENOVIA OOTB is a very important and forward-looking topic for the entire MEYER Group”, says Executive Board Member and Head of Design at MEYER WERFT Malte Poelmann. “Enabling digital and cross-location collaboration within the group in a maintainable PLM platform was the motivation for this project. The consultants from PROSTEP and its partner CENIT made a decisive contribution to the success of the project with their industry and PLM expertise”.
By Jan Bitomsky
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Thursday, September 17th, 2020
Following successful completion of an assessment of the current status, the joint research project ProProS being carried out by the Bremen-based Lürssen shipyard group, the Machine Tool Laboratory (WZL) at RWTH University in Aachen and PROSTEP AG is entering the crucial phase. The task now is to develop new methods for end-to-end digitalization of the shipyard’s manufacturing and assembly processes.
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.©
By Carsten Zerbst
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Tuesday, January 21st, 2020
The shipyard thyssenkrupp Marine Systems has commissioned PROSTEP AG’s shipbuilding experts to draw up a roadmap for the shipbuilding production area in Kiel to digitally integrate manufacturing. The shipbuilders want to make the coordination processes in development, production and assembly more digitally integrated and thus accelerate manufacturing of steel construction.
Today, the departments and companies involved in shipbuilding generally still exchange their product information on the basis of drawings and often even paper, which makes coordination time-consuming and error-prone. Consistent information models and the use of digital technologies can significantly improve the integration of cross-departmental processes. A prerequisite for this is the reliable identification of interruptions and bottlenecks in the information flows.
Starting from the existing enterprise architecture, PROSTEP used a standardized method of capability-based potential analysis, which is based on value stream mapping, to create a capability roadmap for shipbuilding production. In a sense, it describes the target status and allows our shipbuilding experts to identify potential for improvement in the information flow and IT support for the communication processes between design, work preparation and steel production.
Together with the project team at thyssenkrupp Marine Systems, PROSTEP’s shipbuilding experts have identified three key areas of action with 20 concrete measures.
They are to be implemented in the next project steps:
- Firstly, the establishment of a digital twin of hull construction with the aim of being able to map and control the production processes digitally;
- Secondly, the implementation of digital documentation processes for the quality inspections of welding processes and seams and
- Thirdly, the digital connection of the semi-finished product and material suppliers to the digital production processes.
The interdisciplinary team not only identified the measures, but also prioritized them and arranged them in a roadmap. After a project duration of only six weeks, it was able to present the project results to the central production management of the Kiel shipyard. This was a complete success for the shipbuilding production division, which hopes that it will be able to prioritize its digitization projects at the Kiel location more effectively.
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Tuesday, October 15th, 2019
The shipbuilding experts at PROSTEP had a “hot” autumn with a wealth of events. Our new flagship product OpenPDM SHIP was always with us. The integration platform, which connects special applications for shipbuilding with classic mechanical CAD applications and common PDM/PLM and ERP systems via standardized connectors, attracted attention everywhere.
We officially introduced OpenPDM SHIP at ICCAS 2019 in Rotterdam, the world’s largest vendor-neutral conference for computer applications in shipbuilding. Of course, visitors to the AVEVA World Conference Marine Europe in Malmö, the ShipConstructor EMEA Conference in Lisbon and to number of other events at which we were represented were also able to take a look at the integration platform and its most important components. With OpenPDM SHIP, PROSTEP underscores its claim to be the leading specialist for the creation of end-to-end digital processes in shipbuilding and shipping.
With approx. 150 participants from shipyards, suppliers, classification societies, universities and software manufacturers, ICCAS was the ideal forum for presenting OpenPDM SHIP. We were not only represented in Rotterdam with a booth but were also able to inform the visitors in two lectures about the potential benefits of the integration platform when using Best in Class tools and setting up a digital thread for shipbuilding and shipping. The digital thread is the prerequisite for the digital twin, which was a dominant topic at ICCAS. In addition to the technical challenges, the question of who really owns the data and who may use it was also discussed. Shipyards, ship owners, operators, suppliers and classification societies still have to agree on a common usage model.
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) were also important topics in Rotterdam, with this year’s discussion focusing on possible applications in production and operation. This showed that the effort required to process the data is still an important obstacle to the wider use of the technology. Between the presentations, we had interesting discussions with shipyards and with our partners about weak points in the tools and processes, which provided us with important suggestions for the further development of OpenPDM SHIP.
Apart from ICCAS, we have been at numerous user conferences in recent weeks and months with the aim of intensifying cooperation with the respective software manufacturer and explaining the advantages of OpenPDM SHIP to its customers. The approx. 150 participants of the AVEVA World Conference Marine Europe showed great interest in the possibility of connecting AVEVA Marine very easily with common enterprise systems for controlling product development and manufacturing processes (PDM/PLM, ERP and MES) via our standards-based integration platform. In a workshop we were able to show them that our connectors not only reduce the integration effort, but also offer them maximum flexibility in selecting their CAx, PDM/PLM and ERP systems.
For the first time this year we attended the ShipConstructor EMEA Conference in Lisbon, also with OpenPDM SHIP and the new connector to SSI’s Autodesk-based ship development solution. With the latest expansion of our integration platform, we are addressing an interesting new customer base and consolidating our position as a leading integration specialist in the maritime industry. We presented two interesting integration scenarios to the participants of the event which met with great interest, namely the horizontal data exchange between NAPA Steel and ShipConstructor on the one hand and the connection to common PDM systems on the other hand. This enabled us to make interesting contacts with potential new customers.
We presented a somewhat different integration scenario to the approx. 100 participants at the User Seminar Korea organized by NAPA for the Korean shipyards, development offices and classification societies. The focus was on the loss-free exchange of feature information between NAPA Steel and AVEVA Marine Hull, but also on data exchange with mechanical CAD systems such as CATIA or NX. The interest of the participants has strengthened our decision to participate in the event in Korea. The cooperation with NAPA and the local user community is developing very positively from our point of view.
From Korea to Rostock, where the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft invited to the Go-3D again this year. The event, which was attended by numerous representatives of shipyards, design offices, the supplier industry, universities, software houses and of course PROSTEP, was primarily concerned with the application of 3D technology in industry and research. We impressed the participants with a lecture on “From a free data exchange format to a real design model”, which showed, using the example of the Meyer Turku use case, how native CAD models can be generated again from neutral IFC data for further processing. Impressive because our solution based on OpenPDM SHIP not only recognizes features, but also takes into account the different procedures of suppliers and shipyards.
It was a “hot” autumn, but participation in the events was worth it for all of us. We succeeded in generating the necessary awareness for OpenPDM SHIP and the uniqueness of our integration platform among the customers of the various software manufacturers.
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