INTEGRATED PLANNING AND CONTROL THROUGH AUTOMATION IN SHIPBUILDING
Delivering your shipbuilding project on specification, within budget, and in time (OSBIT) is crucial for the long term continuity of every shipyard. To manage your projects well a more granular or detailed understanding is needed of the processes that together complete the project. Due to the explosion of tasks and parts in shipbuilding a high degree of automation is required to manage this all well and combine a project control need with a process performance objective.
AUTOMATED DETAILED PRODUCTION PLANNING
Adding granularity and detail to the project plan
While the aim of the central project plan is to control the project, the detailed production plan will control daily production operations by sustaining predictability and efficiency. The Floor2Plan toolset therefore adds granularity and detail by recognizing the properties of the product breakdown for the particular vessel under construction. This means that all distinctive parts, components or intermediate products (blocks, areas, systems) are recognized individually either manually or via a direct interface with the 3D engineering model.
Since the shipbuilding applied knowledge within Floor2Plan allows for the recognition of the associated activities for each of the particular components, their hierarchical relations and their dependencies, an initial production plan can be created automatically.
Applying yard-specific standards, production norms, and building strategy
To determine the duration, associated resources or budgeted hours for each of these activities it is possible to apply the metadata (weight, shape, welding length) from the 3D engineering model. The result is an initial production plan that combines a product breakdown with a layer of work breakdown. Whilst simultaneously applying the yard specific building strategy, detailed production norms and standards which can be enhanced and improved over time.
In sync with project planning
In order to recognize production performance for the ongoing project, the intermediate results are fed back into the central project plan. This feedback of progress on more granular activities adds to the level of control and predictability of the project plan. To maintain a live link between the central project plan and the detailed production plan, a sync between the Project Plan and Floor2Plan is established.
Different configuration scenario’s
The set up and synchronization between Floor2Plan and the available IT systems from the yard depend on specific preferences. More common scenarios apply feedback loops with job tasks in ERP and integrations with both Primavera P6 (to sync with the project plan) and the engineering 3D model (to capture the product breakdown), after which more granular activities are created and maintained in Floor2Plan and project status is visualized in the eShare (application of 4D planning methods).
SHOP FLOOR CONTROL
Controlling your department
An important premise behind shop floor control is that people perform better if they have a better comprehension of what is expected of them. This is why the shop floor control efforts of Floor2Plan focus on providing key roles such as supervisors, production managers, and trade leads with an overview of all priorities, pending items, risks, performance indicators, material status, documents, and insights to support their day-to-day decision making.
Multiple departments, multiple perspectives
In order to provide supervisors with an instant insight in the performance of their team or department, Floor2Plan aligns itself with the dominant logic of the particular department. Since either rooms, areas, blocks, systems, or engineering documents are the objects that these departments are working on, these are also the intermediate products to which we provide our data. By combining planning and task information with this product breakdown, a supervisor has an instant overview of all pending items per room or block.
Multiple systems, one overview
Through the integration of Floor2Plan with other systems such as ERP, a supervisor has an instant view per component (area, block, room, system) on pending items such as the material status in the warehouse, the level of completion of predecessors, the utilization of resources within his team weeks in advance, the budgeted hours, available floor space. All task-relevant information can be distributed through this single platform for operational execution and control.
Resulting in better decision making
Since the instant recognition of status for all pending items risks, issues, deviations are signaled at an earlier stage, the most cost-effective mitigating efforts can be applied.
Normal practice is that all supervisors create their own (Excel) lists to keep track of issues, plan work in more detail, or control the number of workers per task to keep up with the planned finish date. Floor2Plan brings all these distinctive informational needs together, thereby greatly enhancing transparency, facilitating instant recognition of deviation, and limiting the hours that supervisors currently spend on administration. This leads to better decision making and a better production flow.
Hours worked on tasks versus hours clocked on site
Since supervisors allocate individual workers to individual tasks directly from the planning (via the plan board) a specific selection of activities becomes available for the worker to submit hours on. Through touch screens (or even mobile phones) and RFID-keycards, these workers recognize the allocated activities instantly. After submitting the hours per activity, an approval loop is started requiring the supervisors to validate the input of the worker. Automatic control of clocked versus booked hours is initiated, providing a warning signal where appropriate. Subsequently, the hours are sent to both the planning (job time) and the payrolling system (shop time).
Approval loops to meet DoD compliance standards
Since time- and material-based contracts determine that all collected hours should follow direct registrations from front line workers, Floor2Plan has applied a distinctive approval loop. When the input of a worker is altered by the supervisor, the DoD standards require this change to be validated by the worker. Through the use of a message board, workers recognize the applied changes and digitally provide approval.
Unlock the potential of your shipyard with Floor2Plan. Discover how our innovative software can streamline operations and boost productivity.
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