OC01a.JPG: Outfit components for shipbuilding include even the smallest of items such as nuts and bolts, including U-bolts. They are regarded as stock material, i.e., material department reorders are based upon reaching a specified low-inventory quantity. In some shipyards the amounts per pallet are specified on material lists and the materials are made available at the work place in handy portable bins.
OC01b.JPG: Outfit components for shipbuilding include even the smallest of items such as nuts and bolts, including U-bolts. They are regarded as stock material, i.e., material department reorders are based upon reaching a specified low-inventory quantity. In some shipyards the amounts per pallet are specified on material lists and the materials are made available at the work place in handy portable bins. Ditto for gaskets.
OC01c.JPG: Outfit components for shipbuilding include even the largest of items such as 100-foot diameter LNG spheres. A special plant containing special tooling was employed.
OC01d.JPG: 100-foot diameter LNG tank. The contract specification required that sphere diameters achieved everywhere be within five inches of the design, but it did not state how to obtain the measurements. The NSRP publication “Photogrammetry in Shipbuilding – July 1976” (NSRP 0058) encouraged the shipbuilder to employ a photogrammetric survey. With the LNG supplier’s and ship owner’s approvals, the data obtained for verifying the as-built diameters were employed for producing sounding tables per tank at various angles of list and trim.
OC01e.JPG: The sections of each sheet-steel cap provided to protect an insulated sphere from the weather, was shaped by line heating.
OC01f.JPG: Miscellaneous fittings. The components required to outfit a vessels differ significantly. They are shown organized per pallet. As specified in a purchase order specification, each has had a coat of paint applied by its manufacturer that is consistent with that which will exist in the surroundings when it is fitted on-unit, on-block or on-board. Thus, after each component is fitted and following clean up and touch up, it does not have to be given a catch-up coat of paint.
OC01g.JPG: Scuttles, watertight doors and small hatches are useful reminders that a shipyard should have detailed knowledge of how a supplier’s manufacturing system performs. They require special tooling and skills and if they are discovered to require rework, they disrupt scheduled operations in coordinated work flows. Work that could have been performed on block has to be performed on board with a much greater expenditure of man-hours.
OC01h.JPG: The material-procurement manager in a modern organization does not report to the top manager for adherence to a material budget without regard for what is happening in design and in production. Instead, each reports to a principal operating manager who is also in charge of design and production. Thus, there is focus on cost per pallet rather than preoccupation with buying from a low bidder. The pump shown may not be the one offered by a low bidder, but, because its suction and discharge flanges are on the same centerline, it is likely to effect more than offsetting savings during design and production activities.
OC01i.JPG: Since shape information requires many more bytes in computer storage than any other type of information, effective shipyard managers prefer to buy from an auxiliary-machinery manufacturer who maintains the same basic shape for a family of machines having a range of capacities. Emphasis is placed on maintaining the same relative positions of foundation bolt-hole, nozzles, and space reserved for maintenance. This is another example of the need to evaluate a prospective supplier’s product for its impact on the overall cost of an outfit pallet.
OC01j.JPG: Fittings for modern ships include valve operators in quantities that are too great for them to be ordered as direct materials (allocated) and too expensive for them to be ordered as stores stock (reorder from bin low inventory). Thus, a third material-control classification is used, net requirements (allocated stock).
OC01k.JPG: For typical merchant ships, an effective shipyard managers concentrates on fabricating and assembling in house, only that work that is susceptible to classification per group technology. i.e., the manufacture of hull parts, all hull-assembly work, manufacture of pipe pieces, and outfitting on-unit, on-block and on-board. The fabrication of ventilation-duct pieces is assigned to one or more cultivated subcontractors.
OC02a.JPG: Some shipyard managers worked to achieve close associations with their subcontractors. They are able to subcontract for the manufacture of custom-designed foundations with great assurances for quality and schedule adherence.
OC02b.JPG: Subcontracting for small tanks is more effective since they can be readily fitted on block or blue-sky fitted on board. Thus, they should be designed to be independent of the hull structure.
OC02c.JPG: Large castings, such as that shown for a propeller-shaft strut bearing, are also fittings. If a shipyard has knowledge of in-process accuracy, such as made available by statistical analysis of accuracy variations, strut castings can be fitted on block when stern blocks are upside down. Such is the practice by world class shipbuilders. They have significantly enhanced safety while simultaneously improving productivity.
OC02d.JPG: Traditional managers who allow field running of pipe of less than 2-inches in diameter are giving away control of work. Further, their detail designer cannot prepare detail drawings for machinery-space walkways with assurance that there will be no interferences. Thus, their process for installing walkways degenerates to cutting and fitting gratings and floor plates on board (analogous to wall to wall carpeting). Effective shipbuilders control everything, even tubing and thus prepare accurate detail drawings for walkway sections with confidence. The fabrication of walkway sections is assigned to subcontractors.
OC02e.JPG: Electric-cable junction boxes are used when cable is run through pipes on some tanker weather decks. In very effective shipyards, these are the type of fittings that are manufactured by a small contracting firm that the yard has cultivated. In some cases, the shipyard may have helped to create the firm and provided technical assistance until the small firm was capable of performing on its own.
OC03a.JPG: Usually, assembly of ship’s boilers requires special skills, jigs and tools. Because they are large, boiler subcontractors are permitted to assemble the boilers inside the shipyard.
OC03b.JPG: Assembly of tubing units by a subcontractor is taking place inside a shipyard in order to save packaging and transportation costs and to eliminate the risk of damage during shipment.
OC03c.JPG: Assembly of tubing units by a subcontractor is taking place inside a shipyard in order to save packaging and transportation costs and to eliminate the risk of damage during shipment.
OC04a.JPG: In an efficient facility for preparation of electric-cable pallets, cable reels are stowed on a merry-go-round.
OC04b.JPG: Computerized data is used to select the desired cable type and size. Once the proper cable drum is in position, the operator has only to pull the cable end to an automatic length-measuring and cutting machine.
OC04c.JPG: As an electric-cable length is measured, it is coiled to a specified diameter.
OC04d.JPG: Precut and identified cables are palletized.
OC04e.JPG: After electric cables are pulled on block when blocks are upside down, i.e., people working the smart way, cable remnants are in the order of two meters.
OC04f.JPG: Traditional stowage of electric-cable reels. Reels are transported to the erected hull, placed on deck, and then a cable is pulled into position and cut. The process does not facilitate control through control of material and often results in poor records of the amount of cable left on reels. Also, the traditional process is relatively unsafe because workers often have to pull cables from scaffolding with their arms over their heads and have to carefully chock reels when they are placed on a cambered deck or on a deck that inclines, due to building-ways declivity.