Shop-floor automation and market strategy in Japanese shipbuilding

Effective development and implementation of shop-floor automation is one of the keys to continued Japanese shipbuilding competitiveness. Manufacturing technology is implemented to serve a market strategy, and in many heavy industries (e.g., the manufacture of automobiles and commercial transport airplanes) heavily mechanized production processes are correlated with an exclusive dependence on repeat production. In the case of the Japanese shipbuilding industry, however, extensive automation has not had this result. Instead, shipbuilding automation in Japan is generally designed to support a variety of products, including comparatively simple ship types plus certain kinds of high-value products. Although high-value markets are pursued, the ability to build simpler ship types in a cost-effective manner cannot be abandoned lightly, due to the need to maintain capacity utilization. This position contrasts with that of some European shipyards, which have decided to specialize in high-value special products, such as cruise ships, ferries, and so forth. In this paper, specific cases of automation development and implementation in Japan are reviewed, and we discuss how these types of automation support a two-pronged market strategy.