Can a shipyard work towards lean shipbuilding or agile manufacturing?

Lean production is regarded by many as simply an enhancement of mass production methods, whereas agility implies breaking out of the mass-production mould and producing much more highly customized products—where the customer wants them in any quantity. In a product line context, it amounts to striving for economies of scope, rather than economies of scale ideally serving ever-smaller niche markets, even quantities of one, without the high cost traditionally associated with customization. A lean company may be thought of as a very productive and cost efficient producer of goods or services. − Driving, which adds no value to the product; − Defects, which burden the productive process generating rework, wasted of time, manpower, hours of equipment etc. 1.2 Agile Manufacturing According to Yusuf et al. (1999) agility can be summarized as the use of well-known developed technologies and manufacturing methods. Among them there are Lean Manufacturing, CIM, TQM, MRP II, BPR, Employee Empowerment and OPT. In other words agility is the ability to grow business in competitive markets of continuous and unexpected changes, with rapid response aimed at the consumer/ customer valuing the product and service. − CIM (Computer Integrating Manufacturing); − TQM (Total Quality Management); − MRP II (Manufacturing Resources Planning); − BPR (Business Process Reengineering); − OPT (Optimized Production Technology). Agile can be describe as ‘‘Ability of an organization to detect changes (which can be opportunities or threats or a combination of both) in its business environment and hence providing focused and rapid responses to its customers and stakeholders by reconfiguring its resources, processes and strategies” (Mathiyakalan, et al., 2005). An effective integration of response ability and knowledge management in order to rapidly, efficiently and accurately adapt to any unexpected (or unpredictable) change in both proactive and reactive business/customer needs and opportunities without compromising with the cost or the quality of the product/process (Ganguly et al., 2009).