Jan Jaap Nieuwenhuis
This research focuses at the development of a product platform approach for advanced, complex and innovative ships, such as patrol vessels, corvettes, or large suction hopper dredgers. Competition in these markets is though and in order to survive, shipbuilders continuously need to reduce development times and costs, while maintain or even improve product quality. A very promising way to do so is to implement a product platform approach. A product platform consists of a set of features, parameters, or components that remain constant from product to product across a product family. In many other industries, like the aeronautical or automotive industry, such an approach has proved to drastically reduce product development effort and throughput time.
A well-known example of the application of a product platform is the Volkswagen A-platform, consisting of a common floor group, drive system, running gear and unseen parts of the cockpit. This product platform is shared by 19 different models, like the Volkswagen Golf, Audi TT, Skoda Octavia, and Volkswagen Beetle. These cars all look different, they even belong to different brands, but nonetheless large part of the design is shared.
Topics of interest
Topics of interest for this research are ship systems and technical spaces. Standardisation of hull design and construction is not taken into account. Application of a product platform for ship systems reduces internal variety for the yard, while at the same time the possibility to deliver customised products is maintained. Reducing internal variety amongst others results in decreased engineering costs (reuse of design data) and decreased production costs (higher quality of engineering work, learning effect). An example of a product platform approach for ship systems could be the development of a standard design solution for a Fuel Oil system of a family of Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV), ranging from 50 metres fishery inspection vessels, to 90 metres long heavily armed navy corvettes. The same design solution is applied at all ships within the family (e.g. the same type of fuel oil pumps, delivered by the same supplier, etc), but the ship specific mission capabilities are not affected.
Previous attempts have been undertaken to standardise ship’s machinery and equipment for complex engineering-to-order ships, but standardization in one-off shipbuilding did not become common practice. Because standardisation can easily conflict with customer demands, a careful balance between customisation (=customer satisfaction) and commonality (= benefits for the shipyard) is required.
Objectives
The objective of this research is to develop a method that assist designers and shipyard managers in the systematic development of a product platform, based on an evaluation of the consequences of introducing a product platform for all stages of a ship’s lifecycle.
In order to do so, a number of models are developed to:
- define different product platform scenarios
- predict design and engineering process (costs and throughput time)
- predict production process (costs and throughput time)
- predict purchase costs
- predict operational and life cycle costs
- predict consequences for the saleability
- valuate and optimise platform approaches
Case studies
The working of the methods and models are verified and validated with the use of case studies. Within the case studies, the consequences of applying a platform approach for the non-payload systems of a family of Offshore Patrol Vessels are predicted and compared to costs and effort of developing the same family based on a one-off development process.
The research is carried out as part of the CE3P-project. CE3P is a joint research project of a number of Dutch shipyards, suppliers and research institutes, aimed at improving shipyard processes through improved engineering.
Contact
Jan Jaap Nieuwenhuis, janjaap.nieuwenhuis@conoship.com