The Afterguard

I'm not surprised about the number of changes and delays you are encountering; that's inherent in naval shipbuilding regardless of the navy or shipbuilder involved. When I was the principal assistant to the U.S. Navy’s Supervisor of Shipbuilding for the U.S. Pacific Northwest, administering shipbuilding contracts worth $1.6-billion in the early 1960s, I felt that many whom I dealt with in the Navy and in private shipyards, were part of frustrating self-serving bureaucracies. Upon my retirement from the Navy in 1965 I told my wife, "I will never work in shipbuilding again! I will go into the garment industry before I would work in shipbuilding!"

Of course those are now famous last words. The point is: all naval shipbuilding programs are frustrating! Acts that cause frustration have to be accepted as routine parts of the job. Otherwise, you will blow a gasket.

I'm curious about the nature of the changes that you are getting from your technical headquarters. What percentage is only for the purpose of improving ship-operating functions? What percentage has no impact on such functions, i.e., those changes that are only for improving productivity?

When I lectured in your country, the shipbuilder’s representatives were not the least bit receptive to substituting a product work breakdown structure for their archaic system-by-system work breakdown structure for the production effort. Nor did they seem to accept the need for constantly invoking changes in design details and work methods in ship after ship of the same class for the purpose of constantly improving productivity.

Are people counting things? If so, what is the total number of manufactured or purchased components in each frigate? Is that number, if it exists, increasing or decreasing because of the changes you are getting? What is the total number of pipe pieces? What is the percentage of pipe pieces that are straight? What is the percentage that can be manufactured as straight and bent afterwards? How these percentages change, indicate what is happening to productivity.

There are many more things to count. Note in my enclosed discussion on a recent paper I wrote, "...only achieving a learning curve for the construction of a series of ships is an indication that shipyard management has failed."

Constantly displacing an entire learning curve downward while building a ship series is prerequisite for success!

I also wrote in that discussion, "...it would be erroneous to assume that the detail design as well as the methods used for the first ship, are ideal."

So even when it is cold where you are, you are well advised to keep cool.

Tom Swift wrote:

Hasn't "the learning curve" been discounted and disparaged as we move toward one-off, tailored products? Seems that being able to rapidly respond to the specific needs of a customer is the way to add value. When products are commodities then the customer is price sensitive, but when products are differentiated, pricing is a function of value to the customer. The best case, and most competitive, is the ability to meet the customers specific needs at the lowest cost, which generates best profit for the producer. That is unless you have those wonderful cost-plus-profit contracts.

Lou Chirillo wrote:

If only the total effort for building a unique ship is considered, I would substitute “not applicable” for “discounted and disparaged.” But when a product work breakdown is applied and the identified parts, subassemblies, and assemblies, for example, are classified by the problems inherent in their manufacture, many, regardless of design differences, are likely to impose challenges that are not different from those encountered during previous construction. Thus, for most of the endeavor, the manufacturing system is conned into behaving as if it made the unique ship before. That aspect of Group Technology makes possible organized workflows for which learning curves are not only meaningful, they are essential…even for a one-off ship!

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