Page 37: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (December 1997)

ations permits managers to predict work- flow to a level of precision that is unobtain- able with human worker operations.

Obtaining this precision in performance enables managers to reduce schedule mar- gins and plan shorter span times with con- fidence.

Better Accuracy Control On

Non-Automated Operations

Shipbuilding automation tends to have a disciplining effect on the human worker.

The use of robots is an example. The ship- yard takes advantage of the robots' strength, which is their capability for repeatability, as noted above. Also, the shipyard may take advantage of the robots' weakness, which is their lack of adaptabil- ity. Even after 20 years of robotic develop- ment, the human welder is still superior in adaptive processing; for example, the work- er is much better at adjusting to variations in geometry, such as weld gap widths.

However, shipyards have found that it is inherently more productive and profitable to minimize process variability and main- tain exacting tolerance standards all along the manufacturing process. There is docu- mented evidence that this reduces the over- all costs and time to produce the final prod- uct. Thus, the perceived disadvantage of "lack of adaptability" becomes an advan- tage in "ensuring lack of variability" in the products that flow to the robots.

Recognizing this fact, shipbuilders such as

Odense insert robotic systems into their manufacturing stream for the expressed purpose of forcing and enforcing accuracy control of all detail and interim assembly products.

State Of Automation Of Fabrication

And Assembly Processes

Robotics have been implemented in a wide variety of applications at the leading

European and Japanese shipyards.

Profile cutting, marking and labeling is almost exclusively performed by robotically manipulated plasma arc and oxyfuel cut- ting systems that are integrated into auto- mated conveyors for material handling and sorting.

Nesting and racking of the cut compo- nents are determined by computer aided planning systems that are interfaced to the product modeling systems of the engineer- ing groups.

Welding robots are applied to egg-crate assembled panels, upper deck and tank top seaming operations at erection and curved structures.

These systems utilize infrared and touch sensing feedback for adaptive positioning.

Process and path programming is automat- ed with data prepared by, and obtained from, the CAD model. Portable track-guid- ed robots are applied to upper deck and tank top seaming operations at erection.

Portable and gantry-mounted robots are in common use in world-class shipyards. Hull coating and thermal deformation are near-

December, 1997

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