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Ship construction represents one of the more challenging planning problems in industry today. Examining alternative build strategies costs time and money—design build teams can only afford to try a small number of strategies using existing software tools. There are an enormous number of alternative ways that a ship can be sequenced and grouped into a hierarchy of assemblies. There is a wide range of costs in these alternatives. An 8 to 1 cost difference between different assembly strategies for building the same end product is not unusual. The same is true for designing and planning for maintainability. The result is higher than necessary construction and operation costs. All existing products are designed to route process plant piping--to route pipe through large open spaces and along process vessels—NOT routing in the confined space of ships. For this reason commercial auto routers have not been used in ship design to date. Industrial Planning Technology saves time and money by automating the routing design and planning of shipboard piping, cabling, and HVAC. SmartPlan-Ships™, the automated planning and detailing engine from Industrial Planning Technology, reduces ship construction and operation costs by automatically designing for maintainability and making optimal use of available automated fabrication facilities. SmartRoute™ software builds on the SmartPlan-Ships™ producability and life cycle simulators to generate optimized 3D designs automatically. TECHNOLOGY DESCRIPTIONThe benefits of using Industrial Planning Technology’s SmartRoute™, automated routing software engine, are numerous and include reduction of construction costs through optimum use of automated facilities; rapid replan/redesign for new or upgraded manufacturing facilities; accurate cost and time estimates; reduced time and cost of planning; and reduced time to delivery. Because the completed SmartPlan-Ships™ automated planning system will also allow customers to compress schedules, it will help customers who are in the process of switching to a modern ERP system, such as SAP. The IPT automatic planning engine generates most of the required data automatically, thereby drastically reducing the costs of initiating SAP. Many customers are being market and competitively driven to replace antiquated ERP systems. SmartPlan-Ships™ dramatically reduces the costs and labor in this replacement process and will help in the switch to a modern ERP system. The SmartRoute™™ technology starts with a 3D product model from a CAD system and automatically determines a path through the ship for the distribution systems, using the lowest cost subdivision and assembly strategy. A block diagram of the system, interfaced to CAD/CAM and scheduling and ERP systems, is shown below:
The key to reducing construction cost is to move as much work as possible from manual fitting and assembly to process lane based shop fabrication, using automated equipment wherever possible. The "design for production" approach is hampered by the limited production simulation capabilities of current CAD/CAM tools. The SmartPlan-Ships™ family of software solves this problem.
Introduction of new and improved component fabrication technology is often blocked by the time and cost of re-planning. SmartPlan-Ships™, the automated planning technology, removes this roadblock to the insertion of new fabrication technologies in the middle of a project.
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