WHAT IS PLANNING IN SHIP CONSTRUCTION

our vision on planning in ship construction

Planning is a form of risk management. Before starting to set up your shipbuilding project plan, look at what risks you want to mitigate with your planning. A good example is that people tend to plan the obvious, for example the main engine, while the risks are far more widespread. Minor parts with dependencies between departments can also have a huge impact. No one will forget the main engine, but an error in something small like a gangway might indirectly cause major delays.

Why should you consider an integrated planning for your yard?

An integrated project plan has several advantages. The most obvious one is that it saves time when you implement changes within the planning throughout the different departments of the organization. An even more meaningful benefit is that, as it includes the plan of all distinctive departments and co-makers, the riskier parts of the process containing dependencies are recognized too. In order to control these apparent risks a certain level of detail is needed.  

The level of detail is crucial to account for operational risks

Creating a integrated planning with a lot of detail seems like a lot of work. But this amount of planning is not new to your yard. Also in current practice detail planning takes. But probably more implicitly by supervisors and charge hands using Microsoft Excel. If you add all these dispersed planning efforts together multitude of around 30-50 plans can easily be found all together. All concerning the same process, all with dependencies that are not made explicit

Setting up your detailed planning with support of automation

Automation can speed up the planning process significantly with the right tools. By using smart templates or planning generators. The more planning lines are created automatically, the more time a planner can spend saving money and making smart decision by using his applied knowledge about the yard and project. A planner, in our opinion, should spend less time on drawing lines and more time on mitigating risks by making informed decisions about resources, purchases, deadlines, et cetera.  

Have you yard work from the plan through better understanding

Another crucial element of detailed planning is the number of lines in a planning. If you need a planning that is instantly readable, it should have a maximum of 20 lines. But most plans have many more. With the proper tooling, a planning can be filtered by department, time period, level of detail or other relevant properties. The key is to find a way to get only the relevant information for a specific situation.

Information needs vary for each of the project members

Different departments have different needs regarding planning. Sometimes it’s more subtle, like looking at a specific block or room, but there are also more fundamental differences. A project manager tends to look at his project in terms of result, for example, a ship. This is a product-based approach which leads to a product-based planning, as most of the project managers have learned in their Prince2 courses.

Using the product break down to accommodate different information needs 

Departments are more resource-driven than project manager and therefore tend to look at the work at hand on an activity level. This mostly results in a work breakdown approach. Most plans we see are based on work breakdown. But to provide project managers with the information they need, it’s vital to summarize the work breakdown to a level that is readable for the project manager, by forcing activities to be part of a single summary. Using a product breakdown therefore makes it easier to determine which tasks have to be done for this kind of product or product part and therefore makes automated planning more feasible.Results have proven to be significant 

The promise and potential of an integrated plan for your shipyard 

Our experience at a variety of shipbuilders and through the application of our toolset at a variety of over 300 shipbuilding projects have proven us product break down planning lives up to its promise to accommodate the integrated plan. Delivering more control and increased performance. 

Product hierarchy for planning purposes is key 

Because through the product hierarchy not only is it possible to derive more detailed jobs more easily. The nature of having these detailed jobs and actively distributing them to the project members allows for planning related information to be submitted directly from the shop floor. Like deviations, issues, progress and times spent on jobs. That’s what make an integrated approach really integrated. 

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