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58 Maritime Professional 4Q 2011work of the data exchange format. As these shipyards are of varying size, complexity, and capability, and utilize a variety of ERP systems, the resulting schema is believed to be representative of the shipbuilding industry as a whole. CREATING THE TOOLSET The final stage of the project was for SSI to develop a few simple tools with- in the ShipConstructor environment that would generate XML according to the schema developed earlier. As ShipConstructor drawings are automat- ically generated from the 3D model inDWG form and driven by the Build Strategy for the project, it made sense to drive XML generation from within a ShipConstructor production drawing. Another reason to create the tools with-in ShipConstructor itself is that the tim-ing for the generation of the XML islogically tied to the creation or approval of a new revision of a given drawing and this is an activity driven from with- in the drawing for these clients. For this reason, SSI created a set of commandsthat can be run inside theShipConstructor/AutoCAD environ- ment. In other words, SSI modified ShipConstructor software so that with a few mouse clicks inside of a production drawing, the metaphorical food for ERP is cooked and served on a platter, ready for the beast to consume.RESULTS To date, the shipyards have imple- mented the resulting tools to differentdegrees. Those who have implemented it to a significant degree have noticed immediate improvements including: 1.A reduction in scheduling delays due to a tighter integration between material planning and engineeringwork packages. 2.Increased throughput due to improved Just In Time material han- dling3.Business improvements identified via the process mapping exercise A REPEATABLE PROCESS The philosophy that SSI has followed in utilizing the IDEF0 methodology fordocumenting business?s processes and then creating a proper data alignmentmap and a neutral exchange format can be applied to various other integration projects including the integration of PLM systems and other applicationsused by shipbuilders. ERP systems may be a beast but SSI has found a way to keep the beasts happy. The key is feeding them well. SOFTWARE (Image Courtesy: ShipConstructor) ShipConstructor CAD software Screenshot The AuthorPatrick Dean Roberts is Director of Operations at ShipConstructor SoftwareUSA, Inc., in charge of al US-based sales,support, training, consulting, custom integra- tion and development, and various researchand development projects focused on the USmarket. Roberts served a two year term as the Vice Chairman of Ship Production Process Technologies in the United States National Shipbuilding Research Program(NSRP) that is governed by 12 Executive Members of a consortium elected shipyard organization and is currently serving in his second two year term as the NSRP Vice Chairman of the Business Process Technologies Panel. He has ten years of US shipbuilding, repair, and retrofit experience in the areas of engineering, planning, proj-ect management, and research and develop-ment, as well as 4 years as an executivemanager with ShipConstructor SoftwareUSA, Inc. MP #4 (50-64):MP Layouts 11/8/2011 2:32 PM Page 58