Engineering for Ship Production

Engineering for Ship Production is the use of production-oriented techniques to transmit and communicate design and engineering data to various users in a shipyard. The changeover from a traditional craft-organized shipyard to one of advanced technology has obviously had a tremendous effect on all shipyard departments. It should have had its second greatest impact on the engineering department. However, many engineering departments did not rise to this challenge and, therefore, lost what might have been a lead position for directing and controlling change. Production performance depends largely on the quality, quantity, and suitability of technical information supplied by engineering. By organizing for integrated engineering and preparing design and engineering for zone construction, engineering can step forward and take its proper place and play an essential role in the renaissance of U.S. shipbuilding. Using examples, this paper describes how this can be done.