THE POWER OF A CEM

The Concept Exploration Model consists of a closed design program, supplemented with an interactive preprocessor. It offers a high calculation speed, thereby allowing a vast design space to be explored quickly and systematically. The purpose of this paper is to inform those who are involved in ship acquisition and conceptual design processes, of the possibilities and the limitations of a CEM, by presenting a short review of the underlying design methodology, followed by an introduction in the structure and possibilities of the CEM. To test the viability of this tool in the acquisition process of a ship, a prototype CEM has been used parallel to the existing method in the acquisition process of a new patrol vessel.