Free maturity Scan!

Shipyard
Operational Maturity

quick scan

The world economy is quickly recovering from the pandemic and this is also translated into filled orderbooks for many shipyards. In Northern-Europe we see an intake for superyachts, short-sea vessels and the Naval segment whereas in North-America various dredgers are ordered but also ferries, coast-guard vessels and frigates. In Asia workboats such as tugs or even FPSO’s make up for a large portion of the new work coming in.

In other words, the demand side of shipbuilding is on a high. Requiring shipyards to utilize their full capacity. We at Floorganise see vast improvement potential throughout the industry. The degree of automation is low, operational processes are ill-defined, MS Excel is still the unofficial backbone for the daily processes, clients demand a shorter lead time and skilled craftsmen are too hard to find. The perfect time to apply process innovation for your shipyard is now.

But what is the potential of operational maturity for my shipyard?

Find out here through our operational quick scan where you directly see the result after completing 10 questions.  


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Many shipyards employ a monthly financial reporting scheme to account for earnings. But with what frequency does your yard account for operational performance?

A sequence for job preparation and production could look like the following:

1. Engineering 2. Completion of information for jobs 3. Check material availability 4. Detailed scheduling jobs 5. Material preparation / job 6. Production

How many of these activities are currently managed and tracked in Excel?

When setting up a project plan how do you make sure the plan is the basis for daily operations?

When setting up a new build project what is the average task size that you are planning?

People tend to perform better if they know better what is expected from them. Which of the following applies best to your yard?

The administrative burden put on production managers directly impacts there level of insight and efficiency. Which of these comments is most applicable to your shipyard?

A crucial element in the predictability of daily operations comes from the information sharing between trades. For instance on handshakes that should take place within a block, a room or on a system level. Which of these comments is most applicable to your shipyard?

The positioning of engineering differs extensively from yard to yard. Which summary described your shipyard best?

On the level of automation, which summary describes your shipyard best?

The level of robotization, which summary describes your shipyard best?

Maturity Scan Results

Results: 0 – 40 points

Your shipyard relies heavily on its staff, and not on the processes, to organize and sustain the daily work. It is unnecessary and unwelcome for the yard to be so reliant on individuals. Depending on the size of your yard and the volume of work many activities are taking place double throughout different systems. It is not uncommon to find 50 different plans scattered over the yard for the same project. This is because each supervisor makes and updates their own planning through excel.

Having no connection with the central project plan, financial reporting or the original budgets per trade. And without insights into multi-project priorities. The result of this scattered approach is that foremen are not controlling their own level of performance and as a consequence production managers are not in control for their departments. Resulting in more sustained firefighting and more project level risks to be incurred. Risks which are recognized late in time when cheap mitigating alternatives are not feasible anymore.

The good news is that it is relatively simple to make a huge impact with automating a lot of these manual efforts. The short term gain is that supervisors spend more time on the yard floor. But even more importantly through the involvement of automation there is a leverage coming into play by mitigating more project risks earlier in time.

Our advice:

Invest in making more process steps more explicit by starting to automate a set of basic process steps taking place within the yard every day. A best practice here is the yard control framework that captures all time and attendance, hours to go and progress made per team per week and so updates not only the project level planning but also directly provides performance feedback for foreman and supervisors. A next step is the inclusion of the project control framework to capture more detailed activities, develop the chain of activities and optimize the execution of the building strategy.

Results: 40 – 70 point

Your shipyard is already sufficiently underway to create predictability in daily operations. To move beyond the current level of performance various shipbuilding best practices might be welcome to consider. These support both the basic process like time and attendance but potentially also the automation of project and detailed planning. Whereas topics like all departments working from one and the same integrated plan, live actuals on progress and the inclusion of subcontractors progress for this same plan become within reach.

Our advice:

Depending on the particulars of your yard we gladly share some of our best practices. Probably topics that revolve around the project control framework that include automated detailed planning based on the engineering 3D model can be of use or topics like the integrated planning using both subcontractor input and resource load views per trade, location or department.

Want to know more about process driven innovation for your shipyard? Reach out to us through this contact sheet:

70 – 100 points

Your shipyard is a front-runner by having made explicit the various yard processes, automating them and integrating these with the building strategy and particular infrastructure of your yard. There is sufficient operational excellence mindset to signal novelties and new technologies that can further improve your shipbuilding performance.

Our advice.

We at Floorganise consistently develop digital innovations for shipbuilding operations. Recent examples are for instance the application of historic data to prediction duration and budgets for both long term and short planning items. In other words, we gladly show you a bit more on what our R&D department is up to and which of these tools can enhance the performance of your yard. So please reach out.

Want to know more about process driven innovation for your shipyard? Reach out to us through this contact sheet:

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Curious on learning more about Floorganise? Please reach out, we gladly tell you more.

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