The Role of IT in Shipbuilding

There can be no doubt that any improvement of the shipbuilding process, regardless whether product improvement or process optimization, can be achieved today without massive support of information technology. Any program with the aim to reduce manhours or to increase the technological level of the product itself always results in development demands of ITbased tools, interfaces, data management or processors. Therefore, we can conclude that one of the strategic key values lies in the development, management and application of latest information technology. Surprisingly, despite the strategical key value of IT based technologies, it can often be observed that investments in the ITsector are not determined by rational criteria which neither take into account the strategical value of that discipline nor a simple value for money balance. This does especially hold for the shipbuilding industry with complex products, sophisticated production processes and logistic chains which all have to cope with the extremely short product development cycles and where the fierce competition has already lead to a remarkable reduction of the players in the field, often due to technical delivery problems or extensive manhours. To remain in the market, European shipbuilding industry has to optimize products and processes to the maximum possible. Consequently, a strong engagement in R&D especially in ITtechnologies is a major strategical playing field. This paper describes main conclusions derived from the current situation and the author points out fields where development has to take place in the future.