Lean Methodology in Ship Production

Dear Colleagues,

The shipbuilding industry is very competitive. Whereas the use of lean methods is common in the automobile and aerospace industries, the shipbuilding industry, with the exception of shipyards in Japan, have been relatively slow in adapting these methods. Therefore, it is useful to explore the possibilities where lean principles can be applied in a shipyard environment. The aim is to entice authors to develop methodologies which will aid in identifying the production areas where lean principles could and should be applied with relatively small changes. Then it is necessary to delve into the other areas where it will require hard technology in complement with soft technology to make the complementary improvements.

Principles of lean include improving flow through the elimination of waste. Whereas, we are used to seeing the flow in automobile factories, ship production has different types of flow where the intermediate products represent the thousands of cars made in automobile factories. The aim of a lean methodology is to transform the classical view of slow shipbuilding into more efficient and stream lined production which has perceptible flow. This in turn will allow shipyards to transform into efficient factories which are both robust and efficient, thereby resulting in considerable savings and improving shipyard competitiveness.

Dr. Damir Kolich
Guest Editor

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• Lean manufacturing
• value stream mapping
• shipbuilding
• just in time
• pull systems
• Kanban
• takt time
• balanced flow