Page 37: of Marine News Magazine (April 2017)

36 38

shipowner of the future will demand. To this end, PLM for Shipbuilding enables shipyards to easily develop and publish all handover documentation included in the vessel speci? cations and contract.

Helped by PLM Software, ? eet owners and repair yards can better manage all maintenance and regulatory report- ing requirements, service planning, execution, service pro- cesses, and metrics monitoring and reporting in a single environment. And, this will go far beyond the work of the typical ‘guarantee engineer.’ Nichols adds, “Complete and accurate information to sustain a ship or an entire ? eet can reduce repair, maintenance and overhaul cycle times, boost ? eet availability and lower total ownership cost.” Increas- ingly, both commercial and government ? eets decision makers are now placing equal importance on initial cost and sustainment cost.

Con? guration management from Siemens allows ship- yards to seamlessly track the con? guration of a class of ships or an individual hull number from concept devel- opment through production and across the ship’s entire operating lifecycle. In essence, this helps to provide greater ef? ciencies and savings much earlier in a series-build cycle.

And, says, Nichols, “This is particularly important when the construction phase can last 4-5 years, the Bill of Mate- rial for a ship can exceed more than 1,000,000 parts and changes are continuous throughout the building of a ship.”

For large ? eet operators, the software can aid the main- tenance planning teams to prepare for overhauls and mod- ernizations and track the performance of ships and sys- tems in services.

Looking for the Next Job

Even a busy yard knows that someday, that seemingly fat backlog will evaporate. Siemens aims to give shipyards a leg up on more accurate bid tenders for government and commercial work alike. Nichols explains, “Siemens’ PLM

Software provides a disciplined foundation to respond to both commercial and government bid tenders including compliance with speci? c system requirements and regu- latory speci? cations. Moreover, with Siemens’ PLM Soft- ware retaining the details from successful classes of ships, many systems on future classes of ships need not be re- engineered.” Having that archived data in a logically orga- nized digitized format might just be the ticket to your next series-build assignment.

Before, during and long after the next building boom, the shipyard of tomorrow will be involved in how ships are operated; standalone hulls or large ? eets alike. Siemens is working to create that reality today.

*All images courtesy Siemens www.marinelink.com