Computer-aided design and flexible automated manufacturing technologies presently available and currently under active development can provide the keys to improved productivity in shipbuilding. The specific applications of these technologies, implemented or proposed for other more structured and product-form stationary industries, are not generally applicable to shipbuilding. The problem addressed by this project is the research and analysis of the potential mating of advanced productivity improvement technologies to shipbuilding. Formal criteria are proposed for the selection of ship construction operations and the establishment of their priority as candidates for further study of automation potential.

In the past two decades, the U.S. Navy has undertaken significant projects in the computer aided design, manufacturing, and service life support areas. A few of the those most related to the shipbuilding programs are listed in Table 1 along with the phase in the ship's life cycle they were primarily supporting. CASDAC (Computer Aided Ship Design and Construction) was the grandaddy of them all, dating back to the late 60s when the Navy was designing and building its own ships. The project's goal was to develop software for doing early stage design, through contract design, and detail design at the naval shipyards. They labored under the dual burdens of expensive hardware and relatively unfriendly software development environment, with clumsy operating systems, occasional need for assembly language programming, and early compiler limitations ions. Nevertheless, many programs that are still with us today began during that era, including: SHCP (Ship Hull Characteristic Program) ; SSDP (Ship Structural Design Program) ; HULDEF (Hull form Definition); and SDWE (Ship Design Weight Estimating). The state of CASDACVs progress by the early and mid 7Os is well described in references [1] and [2]. The monument al CASDOS (Computer Aided Structural Detailing of Ships) was developed under CASDAC's sponsorship and actually used to build 6 LCUs for the Army and for Saudi Arabia. Over half of CASDAC's efforts were oriented toward shipyard product ion software, including electrical wiring and fluid piping systems programs. In 193l, long after the end of new ship construction at the Navy yards, CASDAC was subdivided into two distinct programs, the CSD (Computer Supported Design) programs, carrying on the ship design software development, and portions of the MANTECH (manufacturing and technology) program for advancing industry's efforts to improve shipbuilding productivitiy through automation and technology.

Although the U.S. has been a leader in technological development, it has fallen behind some other countries in the industrial implementation of these new methods. Recently issues of Industrial Engineering have addressed some issues as a lack of management commitment to Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems (CIMS) factors limiting the growth of robotics in the U.S., and the reluctance of management to implement office automation. The paper will examine these issues and present some of the published hypotheses of why industrial management in the U.S. is reluctant to accept and apply the newer management concepts and technologies. the industrial engineers' responsibility in finding areas where new technologies will result in improvements, preparing the justification, presenting the plan to management to gain their commitment, and directing the implementation will be discussed.

In 1981 the Ship Production Committee established the Education and Training Panel (SP-3). The panel's purpose is to develop and maintain educational programs in: (1) skilled trades training, (2) pre-entry professional training, and (3) middle management training.

A computer program has been developed which provided for the elimination of manual applications of standards by integrating previously developed standards into existing computer-aided design systems. Standards for the pipe shop were developed between 1978 and 1979 using Manual MOST (Maynard Operation Sequence Technique). Since 1979, these standards, along with information obtained from existing production computer systems have been used by engineering Personnel to manually apply standards to pipe shop work packages which are part of a production control system used to schedule and track the progress of pipe details through each shop work center.

SNAME Panel SP-C on Marine Industry Standards is one of ten technical panels operating under the SNAHE Ship Production Committee. Priority shipbuilding research. and development standardization projects are funded jointly by the Maritime Administration, -the U.S. Navy, and the maritime industry. Projects which focus upon the publication and implementation of national standards are coordinated closely with Committee E-25 on Shipbuilding of the American Society for Testing and Materials. The results of these standardization projects have marine industry-wide applications that result in direct cost and time saving benefits in the construction and repair of Naval and commercial vessels.