Page 69: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2010)

November 2010 www.marinelink.com 67 now the city´s first vocational technical school. This important action will help comply with the workforce demand gen- erated by the large industrial investments in the Suape Complex.

The Engineer Francisco C.E Vascon- cellos Training Center is the first techni- cal school built by a private company in

Pernambuco. It will provide training and qualification for professionals working in the operational areas of the shipyard.

The Atlântico Sul Shipyard is also hav- ing effects in the Southern part of Brazil as most of their specialized naval engi- neers come from the southern states en- ticed by the high salaries, modern equipment and installations of the ship- yard and the possibility of career growth and the chance to work with state of art technology.

Automation is one of the main para- digm breaks that Atlântico Sul Shipyard brought forward in the Brazilian ship- building industry. In the past, it was be- lieved that cheap labor would guarantee competitiveness to national shipyards and that was a mistake, according to the In- dustrial Director of Atlântico Sul Ship- yard (EAS), Reiqui Abe. As an example of automation at EAS, Reiqui Abe men- tioned the panel assembly line which is unparalleled in this country, with a pro- duction capacity of six panels, sized up to 16 or 17 meters each. Without this state of the art panel assembly line EAS would only be able to produce two panels manually. For this year EAS plans a 20% increase in automation equipment invest- ment, hoping to reach 50% production automation within the next few years, whereas the national shipyard production automation average is only 10%.

ShipConstructor software was chosen to design the Suezmax tankers and off- shore platforms after extensive reviewing and testing by Sincronia, a Brazilian IT consultant and integrator for the offshore and shipbuilding sectors. Sirconia found

ShipConstructor to be the clear leader in terms of flexibility, customer support, pricing and its ability to meet the cutting- edge technology requirements of EAS.

As well, ShipConstructor is easily learned which expedites a fully opera- tional 3D CAD/Cam engineering envi- ronment to meet project demands and production schedules. Project Split and

Merge (PS&M) is another ShipConstruc- tor innovation which is being used by

EAS. PS&M enables EAS to optimize utilization of their workforce by allowing work on a single project to be split and

For this year EAS plans a 20% increase in automation equipment investment, hoping to reach 50% production au- tomation within the next few years, whereas the national shipyard production automa- tion average is only 10%.