Abstract

Development of a Simulation Model of the Agile Collaborative Shipbuilding Enterprise

Samant, V., French, S., Bunch, H., Madni, A., Jones, G., and Currie, R.

Abstract

An agile collaborative shipbuilding enterprise represents a distributed network of collaborating shipyards and supporting business entities. The participating entities may be manufacturers, design agents, vendor/suppliers, research institutes, financial institutes, or any other businesses that play a constructive role in the manufacture of the ship. In this presentation, the discussion has been limited to the information processing aspects of the commercial shipbuilding enterprise. The developed models and software products concentrated on creating an enterprise-level information processing infrastructure for shipbuilding, and were part of an overall Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) program concerned with restoring U.S. competitiveness in shipbuilding through simulation-based design. One of the crucial components in the process of forming a virtual shipyard to produce a desired ship (or portion of a ship) requires optimal distribution of the manufacturing process for the product to the available network of production units. This distribution is achieved by evaluating the relative advantages of using manufacturing agents on the basis of production cost, schedule, quality, transportation cost, and other relevant attributes. Likewise, the ability to integrate the design and the manufacturing process is an implicit and distinguishing feature of the agile shipbuilding collaborative enterprise design environment. The product and process integration must occur over the entire life cycle of the ship. A set of requirements are analyzed; the product design and manufacturing process plans are generated; conflicts in the design/manufacturing relationship are resolved; redesign feedback is generated; the designs are updated; and the process is repeated until the optimum solution is achieved.

From:

Samant, V., French, S., Bunch, H., Madni, A., Jones, G., and Currie, R., Plenary address and Invited Paper, Proceedings of the Society for Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME), August 1995.