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Building no-standard and innovative vessels in high-standardized and production oriented Far-East shipyards: the ship-owner perspective
Last modified: 2012-09-11
Abstract
Last decades shipbuilding industry evolution in Western Europe and last years’ economical global market scenario, made unavoidable for many ship-owners to place shipbuilding contracts for no-standard and innovative designs in Far-East shipyards.
As well known, those shipyards, mainly the top-of-the line Korean ones, are high-standardized and highproductionoriented, and it is very difficult for them to adapt themselves in designs where a nostandard ship is involved and where a number of innovative solutions are required. In these cases their attempt is to force ship-owners wishes and requirements towards solutions where operation capabilities and innovation contents desired by the ship-owner could be sacrificed for the shipyard productivity and process standardization.
This situation is worsened by Far-East shipyards’ approach to ship design. Their approach can be seen as “bottom-up”, and it is quite different from our western “top-down” approach, represented by the classic so called “design spiral”. Using their approach in a new design, it is very difficult to control from the beginning the unavoidable design conflicts, especially when dealing with a no-conventional vessel with innovative features.
At the end of 2009 Ignazio Messina placed an order for four 45200 DWT heavy loads roro container vessels at DSME Korean shipyard, and less than two years after the first vessel of the series has been successfully delivered and is satisfactorily in operations. These vessels (among the biggest roro in the world in terms of DWT) are the first post-panamax roro vessels ever built, with special design solutions coming from the Owner’s expertise and demands; equipped with sophisticated and innovative systems like, among the others, an exhaust gas cleaning system for auxiliaries and boiler, and a treatment system for ballast water.
The paper describes in details the vessels characteristics and the ship-owner’s perspective and involvement in designing and building these vessels.
As well known, those shipyards, mainly the top-of-the line Korean ones, are high-standardized and highproductionoriented, and it is very difficult for them to adapt themselves in designs where a nostandard ship is involved and where a number of innovative solutions are required. In these cases their attempt is to force ship-owners wishes and requirements towards solutions where operation capabilities and innovation contents desired by the ship-owner could be sacrificed for the shipyard productivity and process standardization.
This situation is worsened by Far-East shipyards’ approach to ship design. Their approach can be seen as “bottom-up”, and it is quite different from our western “top-down” approach, represented by the classic so called “design spiral”. Using their approach in a new design, it is very difficult to control from the beginning the unavoidable design conflicts, especially when dealing with a no-conventional vessel with innovative features.
At the end of 2009 Ignazio Messina placed an order for four 45200 DWT heavy loads roro container vessels at DSME Korean shipyard, and less than two years after the first vessel of the series has been successfully delivered and is satisfactorily in operations. These vessels (among the biggest roro in the world in terms of DWT) are the first post-panamax roro vessels ever built, with special design solutions coming from the Owner’s expertise and demands; equipped with sophisticated and innovative systems like, among the others, an exhaust gas cleaning system for auxiliaries and boiler, and a treatment system for ballast water.
The paper describes in details the vessels characteristics and the ship-owner’s perspective and involvement in designing and building these vessels.
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