A novel approach for planning of shipbuilding processes

Shipbuilding is acknowledged as an uncertain, complex, and unique industrial effort that yields massive products consisting of numerous parts and is vulnerable to unexpected events. The industry is also dominated by customer requirements through designs tailor-made for a specific ship. Planning in shipbuilding is therefore considered a formidable process. Consequently, many studies have been conducted to develop a planning framework for the industry to efficiently handle planning process. Yet none of these studies are deemed substantial enough to be regarded as holistic, straightforward, well-accepted, and compatible with the nature of shipbuilding. This study is therefore an important contribution by presenting a novel, hybrid, and integrated general-purpose planning framework applicable to all shipbuilding processes. The novel method exploits historical ship construction scheduling data, synthesizing hierarchical planning, dynamic scheduling, and discrete-event simulation, which is validated through an empirical study in this paper

Application of a new multi-agent Hybrid Co-evolution based Particle Swarm Optimisation methodology in ship design

In this paper, a multiple objective 'Hybrid Co-evolution based Particle Swarm Optimisation' methodology (HCPSO) is proposed. This methodology is able to handle multiple objective optimisation problems in the area of ship design, where the simultaneous optimisation of several conflicting objectives is considered. The proposed method is a hybrid technique that merges the features of co-evolution and Nash equilibrium with a ε-disturbance technique to eliminate the stagnation. The method also offers a way to identify an efficient set of Pareto (conflicting) designs and to select a preferred solution amongst these designs. The combination of co-evolution approach and Nash-optima contributes to HCPSO by utilising faster search and evolution characteristics. The design search is performed within a multi-agent design framework to facilitate distributed synchronous cooperation. The most widely used test functions from the formal literature of multiple objectives optimisation are utilised to test the HCPSO. In addition, a real case study, the internal subdivision problem of a ROPAX vessel, is provided to exemplify the applicability of the developed method

Production and distribution research center

Issued as Annual report, Project no. E-24-62

Improving coordination in an engineer-to-order supply chain using a soft systems approach

An empirical study in the ship-building sector has been undertaken to understand the problems associated with the coordination of engineer-to-order (ETO) supply chains and to reveal insights into opportunities for improvements based on the application of soft systems methodology. A number of alternatives to improve coordination of supply chain have been proposed based on the comparison between a soft systems model and actual practice. These alternatives were summarised into seven general principles that help define the role of individual companies in coordinating ETO supply chains, highlighting the company’s structures and interdependencies that lead to project tardiness. Due to the specific nature of a project which changes according to the context, it is difficult to generalise the soft systems model. Nevertheless, future research can further explore some of the principles proposed to deal with coordination problems experienced in other types of ETO project operations, such as construction and oil and gas

Knowledge creation as an ISD goal: an approach based on communities of practice

In this article we present a perspective that considers information systems development as a knowledge creation process. By analysing the literature we evidenced a gap between two streams of thinking: the artefact-centric and the process-centric point of view. The first one focuses on the artefact characteristics but does not consider information systems development (ISD) as a process. The second one emphasizes the development methodology and its dynamics but, even when it considers the IT artefact as the main product of the process, it does not detail the specific characteristics that the artefact should have. With the intention of filling this gap we utilize the communities of practice theory as a framework to understand and make explicit the knowledge processes that lie camouflaged into ISD processes and artefacts. The main contribution of the article is to make explicit the intertwined knowledge nature of ISD process and product and the reasons and the conditions under which it is convenient to consider knowledge creation between the communities of developers and users as one of the main goals of ISD. The proposed perspective emerges from a theoretical deductive reasoning. According to an interpretative viewpoint, an ISD project is then analyzed to illustrate the practical applicability of the perspective. The empirical evidences show some preliminary suggestions for the planning of the ISD activities

Short-Term Resource Allocation and Management

Almost all sectors of the economy, such as, government, healthcare, education, ship repair, construction, and manufacturing require project management. A key component of project management deals with scheduling of tasks such that limited resources are utilized in an effective manner. Current research on resource constrained project-scheduling has been classified as: a) Single project with single mode for various tasks, b) Single project with multiple task modes, c) Multiple projects with single task mode, and d) Multiple projects with multiple task modes.;This work extends the current multi-project, multi-mode scheduling techniques. The resources can be renewable, and non-renewable. In addition, it focuses on short term scheduling, that is, scheduling on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. Long term scheduling assumes a stable system, that is, resources, priorities, and other constraints do no change during the scheduling period. In this research, short term scheduling assumes a dynamic system, that is, resources, priorities, and other constraints change over time.;A hybrid approach is proposed to address the dynamic nature of the problem. It is based on discrete event simulation and a set of empirical rules provided by the project manager. The project manager is assumed to be highly knowledgeable about the project. He/she is regarded as an integral part of the system. Such an approach is better suited to deal with real world scheduling. The proposed approach does not seek to provide a single optimum solution, instead, it generates a series of feasible solutions, along with the impact of each solution on schedule and cost.;Two project case studies dealing with finding an optimum solution were selected from the literature. The proposed technique was applied to the data set in these studies. In both cases the proposed approach found the optimum solution. The model was then applied to two additional problems to test the features that could not be tested on the dataset from the literature.;As for practical implications, the proposed approach enhances the decision making process, by providing more resource allocation flexibility, and results in improved solutions in terms of total project duration and cost. From an academic viewpoint, this research enriches the existing literature, as it provides an extension of the resource constrained project scheduling problems, a discrete event simulation and four cases studies which highlights relevant issues to model properly the complexity of real-life projects

Phased-based management at Aker Yards Langsten : a lean shipbuilding perspective

Confidential until 23-jan-201