Cooperative design by using intelligent electronic supplier catalogs in the Maritime Industry

Make-to-order manufacturers, such as the manufacturers related to the maritime industry, are more and more following the worldwide trend toward further outsourcing of processes and services to benefit from a better specialization, lead time reduction, and better cost performance of smaller and self-responsible companies. This trend requires the optimization of supply chain management with respect to interorganizational information management. Especially in the shipbuilding industry, supply chains are characterized by project orientation (new supplier structures are required for each ship type), the high number of suppliers (more than 60% of a containership consists of supplier parts), and heterogeneous structure of cooperation partners (subcontractor, component supplier, material supplier, engineering offices, etc.), which all together leads to different requirements and a limited cooperation duration. In many cases the expense for both sites (customers and suppliers) for organizing the cooperation is extremely high in relation to the duration of the cooperation. Because of the temporary nature and the heterogeneous portfolio of maritime supply chains, the management mechanisms applied need to be flexible, standardized, and easy to reconfigure. An open communication infrastructure, agreed upon data exchange standards, and harmonized workflows are vital success parameters for maritime supply chains. The European research and development project Dynamic Inter-organisational Co-operative Networks for the Maritime Industry (DYCONET) has been established to define and develop an open communication infrastructure that can be managed also by small and medium enterprises. One important part of the infrastructure is intelligent electronic supplier catalogs. The pilot implementations of the catalogs for complex valves have shown advantages for all partners of the maritime supply chain. The developed intelligent catalog modules are based on international standards, which enables easy extension to other product groups. The DYCONET architecture is the step from centralized internet portals to distributed cooperative design networks.