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Information Access and Reuse – The Business Benefit for Shipyards

An AVEVA White Paper

David ThomsonPrincipal Consultant – AVEVA NET Solutions

AVEVA Solutions Ltd

Published March 2010

Information Access and Reuse - The Business Benefit for Shipyards - an AVEVA White Paper

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Summary

1. Introduction

2. Shipbuilding-specific information management needs2.1 Execution and control of highly

concurrent projects2.2 Capturing and validating the complete

project information model2.3 A collaboration platform2.4 Through-life product support

3. AVEVA NET Product Strategy

4. AVEVA NET in Practice

5. Conclusions

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Contents

This article has been adapted from a paper given at the InternationalConference on Computer Applications in Shipbuilding (ICCAS 2009), inSeptember 2009, organised by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects(RINA). It is reproduced with the permission of RINA.

Summary

This paper examines how advanced information managementtechnology has enabled the shipbuilding industry to exploitpowerful means of accessing and reusing information. It describeshow such efficient information access and reuse are being used toincrease the quality of traditional shipyard products, and how vesselinformation itself is now considered to be a value-adding product.

It goes on to describe the key components required of aninformation management system to meet the specific needs of theshipbuilding industry and presents the basic software designphilosophies and practical capabilities of AVEVA NET.


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‘...advanced informationmanagement technology has

enabled the shipbuildingindustry to exploit powerful

means of accessing andreusing information...’

Photograph courtesy of Daewoo-Mangalia Heavy Industries.

1. Introduction

Current economic pressures are highlighting the changing role thatinformation is playing in the modern shipbuilding industry.

European shipyards have increasingly specialised in the morecomplex types of ship. Here, ready access to more extensiveinformation assets is being used to add value in the increasinglycollaborative processes of defining, building and operating suchships. Despite a general shrinking of order books, these shipyardsare increasing their spend in the design stages in order to increaseoverall efficiency and to reduce vessels’ through-life costs.Increasingly, ship owners, design offices and yards are working inclose collaboration to create new ship types with lower operatingcosts and longer service lives.

Meanwhile, in Asia, a growing shortage of skilled labour has put thefocus on getting new engineers quickly up to speed, while thedownturn in orders for ‘commodity’ vessels is putting a premium onthe ability of yards to continually improve their quality and todeliver increasingly complex projects.

These different circumstances create a common demand forintegrated IT solutions which meet the industry’s lifecycleinformation management needs. This is a relatively recentlyemerging demand; hitherto, the big productivity gains had beenachieved through the use of the ‘virtual ship’ digital 3D model.AVEVA customers have become highly competent at developing andmaintaining this 3D model as it is the key to their efficient creationof complex ship designs and the generation of high-qualityproduction deliverables.

However, it is clear that the biggest opportunities for furtherincreasing business value now lie in better management andexploitation of a project’s information assets – the vast andinterrelated aggregation of data and documents which togetherdefine the entire vessel.

To meet this need, AVEVA has developed AVEVA NET, a powerfulinformation management toolset specifically for the capitalengineering industries; not only for shipbuilders but also for thedesigners, builders and operators of plants. This highly integratedtoolset not only allows the capture and control of projectinformation during the design phase, it then enables this rich dataasset to be exploited in the later stages of the project’s lifecycle.This paper examines the specific needs of the shipbuilding industryand how AVEVA NET is being deployed to fulfil them.


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‘...the biggest opportunities forfurther increasing business value

now lie in better management andexploitation of a project’s

information assets – the vast andinterrelated aggregation of data and

documents which together definethe entire vessel...’

USNS Carl Brashear (T-AKE 7) under construction. Photograph courtesy of General Dynamics NASSCO.

2. Shipbuilding-specific information management needs

Perhaps one of the most distinctive characteristics of shipbuildingis the high degree of concurrency between the various phases of thedesign process and of production. Fundamental changes to thedesign are commonly made even after materials have been ordered;often, even after construction has started. Evidently, a similarlyconcurrent view of design and manufacturing data is necessary toenable optimisation of workflow through the various processes inthe yard.

An effective shipbuilding solution must, above all, enableconcurrent visualisation and management both of the evolvingDesign Bill of Materials or Tree and of the Assembly orManufacturing Bill of Materials (BOM). This means handling notonly the millions of individual designed and procured parts but alsothe all-important layer of assembly data.

2.1 Execution and control of highly concurrent projects

Unlike most manufacturing industries, large-scale shipbuilding isfundamentally a one-off, capital project process, and physicalprototyping is not feasible. Even though a single lead ship designmay become a series of vessels, each is nevertheless a uniqueproject. In this business model, the product design is a complexnetwork of interrelated component designs, evolving iterativelyinto the final product configuration. To meet demanding scheduleand cost constraints, all downstream activities, includingfabrication and assembly, must begin as soon as sufficiently matureiterations of the designs they are based on become available.

Individual component designs may undergo rapid refinement andchange, but working with incorrect or out-of-date information canseriously degrade project efficiency. It is therefore essential toefficiently control all design iterations, their status and theiravailability to dependent project participants. To achieve this, ashipbuilding solution must not only be tightly integrated with allthe design authoring systems used on the project, it must alsocontrol the flow, integrity and quality of product data acrossdepartmental and organisational boundaries, and manage theproject workflows. And it must also support best-practice processesand tools for defining, monitoring and controlling projectexecution parameters such as cost and schedule, progress,productivity, materials and design variation.

For shipbuilders, the benefits of such technology can beconsiderable. Workflow management that delivers the rightinformation at the right time to the right people can save time,eliminate unnecessary duplication of tasks and optimise resourceloading, increasing overall project efficiency. This has a multiplyingeffect; eliminating inefficiencies and managing informationeffectively not only saves direct costs, it frees up resources soonerfor the next revenue-earning project and puts the finished vesselinto service earlier.


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‘Workflow management that deliversthe right information at the right timeto the right people can save time,eliminate unnecessary duplication oftasks and optimise resource loading,increasing overall project efficiency...’

Below: Powerful information management is required to handle the Bill ofMaterials and product structure as they evolve from initial estimate, throughdesign and assembly planning into the final production phase of the project.

2.2 Capturing and validating the complete project information model

Many different companies, processes and engineering disciplinesare involved in building a ship, using a wide variety of softwaretools and producing a vast amount of information to be managed.The majority of this information is typically created in the mainCAD/CAM system in the form of 2D schematics, 3D models, drawingsand production information, and may be managed within thissystem. However, a large amount remains unmanaged or, at best,managed by disparate systems; for example, Naval Architecturecalculations, the wide variety of CAD models, 2D designs and serviceinformation provided by subcontractors and equipment suppliers,and the information trail produced in the materials procurementprocesses.

Not only is this information stored in a variety of (usuallyincompatible) formats, it will have close and complex relationshipsto other information and documents, and it almost always has anunderlying workflow associated with it.

Any viable information management system must therefore be ableto integrate such disparate content. It must form an application-neutral environment for all data, regardless of which programsoriginally created that data and where that data actually resides.The system should also be able to automatically cross-referenceinformation to other relevant documents, objects and work flows,and make it all readily accessible in a controlled and meaningfulway.

Only with this consolidated view of information can the full benefitsof a complete project data model be realised.

2.3 A collaboration platform

With the world’s shipbuilders working more and more closely withdesign offices, ship owners, suppliers, class societies andregulatory bodies, the ability efficiently to run collaborative, multi-site projects provides a real competitive advantage. Collaborativeprojects are not new in shipbuilding but, in many instances,solutions to information management needs have had to be home-grown, frequently requiring compromise, workarounds andsignificant management overheads.

An information management technology which can overcome thisproblem and provide the ability to share all types of information –not just design data – effectively between distributed resources is atrue business strategy enabler, offering a new level of flexible,collaborative working. Multi-site, multi-partner projects mayoperate as a single entity, even while individual participants join orleave the consortium as requirements dictate. Teams acrossdifferent locations or time zones can work in parallel on a commondatabase, so projects may be scaled by bringing in resourceswherever they are available. Workflow automation routesinformation quickly and correctly, ensuring that even the mostwidely-spread project team can work efficiently.

Such information management can provide considerable businessadvantages in responsiveness, flexibility and scalability. Properlyexploited, these can greatly magnify the individual productivitygains achieved by upgraded design or operations software tools.


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2.4 Through-life product support

There are three principal ways in which an information managementsolution can enhance vessel ownership and operation; instreamlining the handover and commissioning processes, inincreasing the efficiency of refit projects, and in increasing theefficiency of day-to-day operations and maintenance. Suchsolutions have therefore come to be referred to as Product (orProject) Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems.

Traditionally, the handover of a ship from the yard to its owner was aclearly defined cut-off point. Today, however, it is clear that single-point handover is no longer an efficient way of working. There isconsiderable advantage in shipyard and owner working inpartnership from the earliest stage, and in using commoninformation management tools. This allows, for example, operationand maintenance procedures to be developed as the design evolves,providing valuable feedback into design and reducing thesubsequent time to bring the vessel up to full operational status.Engineering, handover and commissioning can thus becomeconcurrent, phased processes, beginning well in advance of thelaunch date.

During its service life, a vessel may undergo a series ofmodifications designed to extend its capabilities or its service life.These modifications may range from routine refit through toextensive product overhaul, but are each executed as one-offprojects involving different project participants and a variety ofdesign tools. Such projects are essentially small-scale shipbuildingand will employ similar processes, enabling the efficiency gainsfrom information management to be achieved here also.

Once in service, ship owners need operating manuals to allow themto operate and maintain their vessels efficiently. Such a manual is,in fact, a colossal data pack – a subset of all the information createdand gathered by the shipyard and progressively added to by theowner. Originally, this data pack consisted of physical documents;costly to create, hand over and control, bulky to store, difficult touse efficiently and hard to share between the different disciplinesinvolved in operating a ship. To overcome these problems, ownersincreasingly insist on electronic handover of information; 98% istypical of current best practice in offshore and naval projects. Butthe usefulness of an electronic data pack is limited if it is no morethan a collection of digital documents; adding intelligence, andtools for easy access, tight control and extensive cross-referencing,transforms it into a value-adding asset.

To appreciate how a modern information management solutionmight be used at sea, imagine that a problem arises with, say, alubricating oil pump. Reliable studies in the engineering industrieshave shown that up to 60% of the man-hours involved in dealingwith such maintenance problems can be spent tracking down thecorrect information. With a PLM system, however, the ship’sengineer may obtain all of the pump’s associated information withinminutes. An efficient solution will offer a choice of ways to do this;for example, by entering the pump’s tag reference directly, byselecting it from an intelligent system schematic, or visually, eitherby navigating a 3D model of the ship or by clicking on ‘hot-spotted’photographs. Information access ceases to be detective work andbecomes as quick and easy as web browsing.

Where available, real-time and historical data from systeminstrumentation may also be presented, so the engineer mightexamine this to diagnose the problem and assess its priority. He canquickly find spares lists and locations, select the correctmaintenance procedures, examine the system schematic to checkthe shut-down sequence, and even view the ship’s schedule to planthe best time to carry out the work. And when the maintenancework is completed, the engineer can use the PLM system to recordthe work done and the parts added which, in turn, can besynchronised with on-shore business systems. Not only can thislevel of information access cut maintenance costs and time, it canalso enable better preventive maintenance and reduce the risk ofcostly unplanned stopovers.

Given the scale of the revenue streams involved, it is not surprisingthat the oil & gas industry has been quick to grasp the benefits thatsuch powerful technology can deliver. FPSO projects now routinelyimplement PLM solutions from the earliest stage and these are seenas ‘mission critical’ to efficient operations. In naval vessels, it iseasy to visualise the importance of rapid information access incombat situations, while cruise ships contain not only manycomplex systems but a ‘cargo’ that will complain loudly if they donot work properly.

In naval practice, it is not unusual to decommission vessels and laythem up against future needs. Inevitably, when required again, thespeed of putting a ship back into service is important. A good PLMsystem preserves the ship’s information assets ready for useimmediately, allowing a crew (who may be unfamiliar with thevessel) to carry out the recommissioning process efficiently.

Astute ship owners are already seeing the commercial potential ofexploiting the powerful information technologies which formerlynever went beyond the shipyard gates.


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A possible shipyard application of PLM. The InformationHub is a rich asset integrating all project information asit evolves.

Typical handover to Operations using PLM. The OperationsHub contains an integrated subset of the PLM datacreated by the shipbuilder.

3. AVEVA NET Product Strategy

Whether in the plant or marine industries, experience has shownthat there are certain key elements to implementing complexinformation management systems. In order to accelerate customerstart-up times, provide effective base functionality, and bringbenefits to where they are most needed, AVEVA has identifiedseveral key focus areas for the ongoing development of AVEVA NET.

These key categories of technology and software components are:

Data Capture and ValidationThe capture of all project information regardless of format andlocation, validation of its quality, and making it available to thelarger shipbuilding enterprise.

Data and Document ControlEnsuring document consistency by registering them in a managedand controlled way, enabling efficient searching and reportcreation, and control and management of the distribution ofdocumentation.

Project Execution Control Integration with other project execution systems and the control ofproject tasks. Key components are Project Setup and Standards, theWork Pack Manager, Change Manager and Handover Manager.

Enterprise IntegrationIntegration with the enterprise’s IT systems, in order to take fulladvantage of the above functionalities.

These categories can be further subdivided, making them easier toanalyse from a business requirements point of view and benefittingcustomers in terms of the flexibility and scalability of the solutionsthey choose to implement.


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For maximum ease of deployment, operational effectiveness andscalability, AVEVA is standardising and modularising as much of thisfunctionality as possible. This ensures that any individualdeployment is substantially ‘out of the box’, with a minimum ofconfiguration required to accommodate a customer’s specificbusiness needs.

These modular elements include:

AVEVA NET GatewaysAVEVA NET Gateways provide the technology to read multiple datatypes and automatically identify and categorise the data heldwithin. Moreover, with only simple configuration, the associationsbetween different data can be made at the same time. AVEVAprovides a wide range of standard gateways for the most commondata types and can also provide customer-specific Gateways.

Several of the standard Gateways are for handling CAD data (forexample, the Tribon M3 Gateway, the AUTOCAD Gateway or theXMpLant Gateway.) These can read a variety of CAD formats andcreate an application-neutral format for viewing with aninformation portal, as well as an XML file detailing the objects andtheir associations contained within the files. Other Gatewayssupport specific applications, such as the Leica Tru-View or the SAPGateways.

Perhaps the most useful Gateway is the Data Extractor, for capturingdata from general sources, such as a database or an XML file,providing the ultimate flexibility to import data from almost anysystem into AVEVA NET.

The Gateway technology and concept are being extended to includeWeb Services connections, a vital element in enterprise ITintegration.

AVEVA NET PortalAVEVA NET Portal provides the user interface for searching, viewingand interrogating all project data independently of the authoringapplications. It is based upon several key technologies from bothAVEVA and third parties, most notably the VizStream technology forstreaming 3D models. This technology allows the viewing andnavigation of 3D models of unlimited size over a relatively low-bandwidth Internet connection, without even the need for agraphics card.

AVEVA NET Project Setup and StandardsThe Project Setup and Standards module stores and manages ashipyard’s reference data and standards. It is the single source ofobject type definitions, attributes, associations, templates andrules. Information from Project Setup and Standards is used toaccelerate new project setup, by providing intelligent templates fortree structures, workflows, project copying and reporting

AVEVA NET DocumentsConsists of the solution modules required to manage engineeringdocuments. Its core components are a document register and atransmittals manager, and it integrates with other key functionalitysuch as the handover manager, change management, and theworkflow engine. It ensures consistency of documents bycontrolling revisions and checking for duplicates upon import orcreation. The document transmittals manager ensures the rightdocuments are sent and received by the right person at the righttime. In addition, the workflow engine can be used to create newdocument media types for distribution based on object or documentstatus.

As with all these solution modules, AVEVA NET Documents providesstandard and customisable reporting and KPI tools for managementvisibility.

AVEVA NET Engineering ManagementAVEVA NET Engineering Management is a key component for thecontrol of project execution. Its purpose is to extend the alreadyrich engineering management capabilities of AVEVA Marine byadding managed workflows to key design and engineeringactivities. This module provides the overview of engineeringactivities, such as the current status of the project in relation to theproject plan, or live data in ‘dashboard’ form to give a quickoverview of the changes in the project. Its core elements are itsconnection to AVEVA Marine and other specialist engineeringsystems, its link to project management and ERP, and its engines forchange management and workflow.


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‘For maximum ease of deployment, operational effectiveness and scalability, AVEVA isstandardising and modularising as much of this functionality as possible. This ensuresthat any individual deployment is substantially ‘out of the box’, with a minimum ofconfiguration required to accommodate a customer’s specific business needs...’

4. AVEVA NET in Practice

The following typical scenarios, drawn from the experiences of itsusers, illustrate how AVEVA NET is being successfully employed inthe marine industry:

Scenario 1 – A shipyard moving to integrated engineering,design and productionThe highly concurrent and complex shipbuilding process places highdemands on the engineering system. The accuracy and consistencyof the engineering model will have a profound effect on the qualityof all subsequent lifecycle-related information requirements.

During the shipbuilding boom in 2007 and 2008, Europeanshipyards experienced a surge of new orders. However, through acombination of disparate engineering systems and outdatedtechnology, many of these yards were not sufficiently competitivein the global shipbuilding market. Late delivery and poor quality ofdesign and production deliverables incurred excessive rework costs,project delays and inefficient use of costly resources such as dockcapacity.

AVEVA Marine is an example of a system designed to overcome theseproblems. Its unique database technology supports a datacentricmodelling system optimal for the specific needs of shipbuilders.This ensures high performance and efficiency in creating large,complex models, integrates schematic and 3D models to ensuredata consistency, and enables database-driven drawing production,which also provides consistency while facilitating automatic changehighlighting and comparison between drawings and the 3D model.All this functionality can be shared and controlled across multipledistributed sites by means of the AVEVA Global technology.

After the release of AVEVA Marine in 2007, several medium-sizedshipyards in Europe took the opportunity to upgrade theirshipbuilding systems. After an initial training period they werequickly able to exploit their new technology, with most realisingmore or less immediate benefits through being able to integratehull and outfitting design.

Yards delivering complex projects such as offshore support vesselsalso achieved substantial reductions in the inconsistencies betweentheir 2D schematics design and the corresponding 3D design. Whenreaching the production stage of their first AVEVA Marine vessels,all yards achieved huge reductions in the time required to create theproduction drawings, as these were generated directly from themodel instead of data having to be extracted and manually modifiedto create suitable drawings. When making design changes afterdrawings had been created, these yards also benefitted frommassive reductions in the time taken to update and reissuedrawings.

During pre-sales activities with these yards, AVEVA was invariablyasked about PLM and PDM (Product Data Management) solutions, asthese were offered by other vendors. When comparing the typicalfunctionalities offered by these technologies with the needs of theshipyards, it became clear that AVEVA Marine already incorporatesmany of the important functionalities traditionally provided byPDM, such as user- and role-based access control down to theattribute level, customisable and preconfigured product breakdownstructures, object status control, built-in rule-based design andconsistency checking.


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An example of automatic change highlighting.

As these new customers began to gain the benefits of integratedengineering design and production, AVEVA began working with themto identify the focus areas for deploying AVEVA NET. The immediateresult was that previously unmanaged documents, sent between theyards and their subcontractors and other project partners, could berobustly controlled. By adding AVEVA NET to an AVEVA Marinedeployment, the shipyards, their suppliers, partners and customersall achieve additional benefits by bringing under control all thosedocuments and information packets which are not generated by, ordirectly created in, the design system.

One example of this is the simple generation of productiondeliverables. AVEVA Marine inherently ensures that productiondeliverables can only be created after passing production checks.With the new Status Control functionality, the successful passing of aproduction check can be used to trigger a promotion in status, forexample to ‘Ready for production’. As AVEVA Marine connects toAVEVA NET via a Web Services or SOA principle, this change of statuscan be used to trigger further work flows within the wider enterprise.

Scenario 2 – Design offices offering full-service project datamanagementAVEVA works with several European design offices who offer a fulldesign, procurement and hand-over service to their Ship Ownercustomers. They are responsible for the design of the vessel, theprocurement of its equipment items and the handover of productiondeliverables to the yard, as well as all documentation necessary forship operations and maintenance.

Initial analysis of their working methods showed that most designoffices maintain considerable amounts of data over and above thatproduced by their 3D CAD/CAM systems. This data was usuallyorganised according to building group or design area and, more oftenthan not, managed using a customised Excel or Access database. Thisinformation was therefore not readily available to any of the projectpartners unless they were in the local office or received a copy by postor email, which is undesirable due to the dangers of last-minutechanges and breach of confidentiality. At handover time, it wasinvariably found that much of the data residing in these localrepositories was redundant, out of date or duplicated.

Self-evidently, before any mass of data and information can becomeuseful it must be verified for quality, categorised in appropriate waysand made readily available to its users in a meaningful manner. AVEVANET technology is built on precisely this principle. The core of theAVEVA NET platform enables a shipbuilding enterprise to categorise,validate and cross-reference any new data or documents almostentirely automatically. Whereas conventional PDM systems requireextensive customisation to be able to capture even the most criticalof data and document types, AVEVA NET accomplishes these tasks viathe relatively simple configuration of modular Gateways.

Once the data is captured, categorised and cross-referenced, AVEVANET’s standard tools enable the efficient production of reports andqueries, which can quickly highlight any inconsistencies.

This functionality proved a very good fit with the design offices’needs. As the design offices were already using AVEVA’s design tools(Tribon M3 or, progressively, AVEVA Marine) they were able to quicklycreate rich information assets containing the actual 3D models oftheir current vessel designs, with their associated drawings, diagramsand all mission-critical project documentation, all intelligently cross-linked to each other and fully navigable through a web-based portal.

By thus giving the ship owner’s design team access to the 3D model asit progressed, these specialists were able to give feedback onoperational issues from the earliest design stage. It also ensured thatall project participants (for example, the Classification Society or theequipment suppliers) were working from the correct versions ofspecifications and other important documents.


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The generation of production deliverables can be automated and associated with adocument transmittal process via the AVEVA Marine to AVEVA NET connector.

Data validation reporting.

Scenario 3 – Project Execution Control in a cruise ship builderThe abilities to create an accurate and consistent engineeringmodel, and to capture and validate all digital engineeringinformation are essential, but not sufficient, requirements for aneffective PLM solution. The missing ingredient is workflowmanagement. This can be illustrated by an example of a typicalworkflow encountered in shipbuilding; in this case, drawn from theexperiences of a builder of cruise ships, the optimisation of pulledbends during the 3D design of piping.

To minimise the costs of materials and labour, the number of elbowsin any given pipe spool should be kept to a minimum. Bending ischeaper. However, several factors influence the ability to use bendsinstead of elbows. Whether within its own resources or those of itssub-contract fabricators, any given yard will have at its disposalonly a limited number of pipe bending machines, each with its ownfixed operating parameters. Piping designers must work within theconstraints of the available machines. But the exact productionlocation of any particular pipe spool is not known until late in theplanning process, so it is difficult to optimise the use of bends atthe design stage.

AVEVA NET Enterprise can provide a solution to this problem. Bycapturing into AVEVA NET the rules which determine where best tobuild specific types of spool, and planning information for both theproject and the subcontractors, a workflow can be created tooptimise piping design for manufacture.

As each object in AVEVA MARINE has a status, and its individualcomponents are known, the designer can initiate a workflow uponrequesting the release of spool data to production. This workflowmay involve several other IT systems such as ERP, project planning,and even data from the subcontractors. AVEVA NET can analyse theworkflow forward through fabrication and, where there is a conflictbetween the spool design and the fabrication constraints, couldthen return a suggested design adjustment, or even (if permitted)automatically modify the spool accordingly. The final stage of sucha workflow would be to mark the spool as having been optimised(for knowledge management purposes) and automatically to createthe isometric or pipe sketch drawing and send it to production.

Scenario 4 – Knowledge reuseIn order for knowledge to be reused it must, of course, first becaptured and validated.

The list of deliverables required for a given ship type is normallyknown in a yard and can be detailed at the beginning of a project. Ifthis knowledge is captured in an electronic form, such as aspreadsheet or database, it can be used during the design of a shipto ensure that all required deliverables are accounted for.

If, for example, experience has shown that a typical fire zoneshould result in six lighting drawings, four piping plans, twoaccommodation drawings and a safety plan, one can build up acorresponding workflow which would prevent the approval of thatfire zone until all its deliverables are correctly accounted for. Takingthis concept a level deeper, even the approximate content of eachdrawing view will be known at a very early stage, based onexperience from other ships of a similar type. If digitally captured,this knowledge can be used to automatically generate a completedrawing list with predefined views, and even their content, basedon the drawing technology of AVEVA Marine. A workflow could thenautomatically generate the drawings when the corresponding 3Dmodels become available. For even more business value, theexperiences of implementing such knowledge reuse should becaptured as knowledge, to provide, for instance, a ‘managementdashboard’ for design or IT managers.


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‘The list of deliverables required for agiven ship type is normally known in ayard and can be detailed at thebeginning of a project. If this knowledgeis captured in an electronic form, such asa spreadsheet or database, it can be usedduring the design of a ship to ensurethat all required deliverables areaccounted for...’

5. Conclusions

In both the commercial and naval shipbuilding sectors there isstrong interest in, and business need for, integrated solutionswhich address the same spectrum of functional requirements asconventional PLM systems. These include data and documentstorage, workflow and process management, product structuremanagement, application and data integration, andvisualisation/collaboration. In practice, however, few shipbuildersuse conventional PLM solutions because the project-basedcharacteristics of the industry are different from those of thediscrete/repetitive volume manufacturing industries in whichconventional PLM technology originated and is most successfullydeployed.

These characteristics centre on shipbuilding’s use of sophisticateddesign processes and integrated project execution techniques toplan, monitor and control complex, highly concurrent, one-off,project-based product design and construction. This imposes a veryspecific set of requirements for any PLM solution to be able to meetthe needs of shipbuilders. Shipbuilders looking to deploy a PLMsolution should fully understand these requirements and carefullyevaluate any candidate solutions against them.

To meet the capital engineering industries’ demand for an optimalPLM solution, AVEVA has created AVEVA NET, an open, web-basedsolution specifically designed to support the business processes andtechniques used in ship design and construction. It employs novel,object-centric concepts and technologies to meet the system designcriteria and functional requirements outlined above. It issuccessfully deployed as a key business enabler in the marine andoffshore industries around the world.


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‘To meet the capital engineeringindustries’ demand for an optimal PLMsolution, AVEVA has created AVEVA NET,an open, web-based solution specificallydesigned to support the businessprocesses and techniques used in shipdesign and construction...’

Liberty of the Seas. Photograph by Jouni Saaristo, courtesy of Aker Yards.

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Tel +44 (0)1223 556655Fax +44 (0)1223 556666

AVEVA believes the information in this publication is correct as of its publication date. As part of continued product development, such information is subject to change without prior notice and isrelated to the current software release. AVEVA is not responsible for any inadvertent errors. All product names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective holders.

© Copyright 2010 AVEVA Solutions Limited. All rights reserved. WP/IAR/10

www.aveva.com

Headquartered in Cambridge, England, AVEVA Group plc and its operatingsubsidiaries currently employ more than 800 staff worldwide in England,Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Dubai, France, Germany, Hong Kong,India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore,Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, South Korea and the USA.