AUTOMATION OF WORK PROCESSES IN SHIPYARDS

Part A - The loading Area - This report deals with building sections in the loading area. A series of production plans for various combinations of sections and section weights have been constructed. The building of complete section discs seem to give a total increase in efficiency of about 20%. Besides an increase in efficiency, environmental improvements can be expected. Three representative pilot ships have been used as reference in the project. Part B - The engine room area - The report concerns outfitting of the engine room area in advance. Various methods are described: Prefabrication, mounting of different parts outside of the hull and section equipping. With a high degree of early outfitting certain demands must be made on the arrangement of the engine room, planning and section size. NSFI has developed a computer program for grouping components in the engine room. In building complete sections, the possibilities for section outfitting will increase. A rough analysis shows that a high degree of prefabrication may reduce the working hours about 15%, or about 3% of the total hours spent. Part C - The Superstructure -Five different building methods are proposed. Particular weight is put upon: Block building; Rigging with prefabricated modules. Block construction makes it possible to equip considerable parts of the superstructure before installing them on board the ship. Again a reduction in man-hours is obtained. One gets a more even load on the equipment department, easier transport of men and parts. An interestiung method is to have the superstructure constructed of prefabricated modules. They may be completely finished elsewhere and just the final rigging is left to the workers on board. This makes possible a very flexible construction and also a high degree of standardizaiton.