What is the optimum organizational pattern in a shipyard for application of Numerical Control (NC)? A precise answer to this question does not exist. Many things influence a shipyard s operation: management attitudes, personnel availability, finances, and geographical limitations are but a few. Without consideration for any of these factors, a good NC structure for a shipyard should be as follows: A computer applications section to develop or procure the software necessary for a good NC program; A fairing group, established in a department, that has the ability to manually fair a ship, and the adaptability to learn computer fairing; A scientific section that uses the data base for hull calculation programs, and provides the basic information needed for fairing and hulload; A hull engineering department, producing accurate drawings by utilizing the data base for drafting purposes, and supplying detailed information for fairing and hulload; A hulload group initial loading comprised of engineering and NC loft people -- of the data base should be done by hull engineering, with the NC loft, taking responsibility for the maintenance of hulload when part generation begins; and An NC mold, under production management, whose duties include part generation and nesting programming, as well as data base control -- this group should have access to whatever equipment is necessary to accomplish their duties. A review of the NC operations of several successful shipyards will be an effective method of determining a suitable NC system. Such a study will enable management to decide what hardware, software, and organizational pattern would best suit their needs.

Proceedings of the REAPS Technical Symposium. Paper No. 24: Group Technology and Automated Process Planning, a Change in Management Strategy. The trend toward increased customization is increasing the problems associated with batch manufacturing, both in design and manufacturing itself. Group technology helps to solve these problems and is thus attracting great interest. The benefits of group technology in such applications as design retrieval, design standardization, standardization of machine tool routings, automated process planning, and machine tool investment can bring about dramatic savings in the multibillion dollar manufacturing industry. Three or four years ago, only a handful of companies were interested in group technology. Today, many companies, including a number considered to be highly conservative, are seriously considering or have adopted group technology systems. This increased interest is a reflection of a growing awareness of the potential benefits of group technology, particularly for batch manufacturing. These advantages can apply to both design and manufacturing.

With shipbuilding capacity worldwide well in excess of demand and competition for orders extremely fierce, shipyards must ensure that all resources are used effectively. Each man on the shop floor, each foreman and manager must be able to carry out the work required of him - which means that he must be provided with all the required information on the work to be done and the means to carry it out. The competition for orders, quite apart from resulting in shorter lead times, has resulted in shipyards building a wider range of products than was envisaged even a short time ago. The potential. variety of individual operations within a shipyard in this situation is much higher than in the case of a single product facility. The information channels used in this production system are similarly going to require greater capacity, speed and accuracy. SPCS is a flexible and uncomplicated approach to production control, aiming to supplement management rather than to replace management decision making by black-box decision rules. It consists of a set of inter-tied modules, each of which is executed either manually or by batch computer processing or on-line, depending on local circumstances.

Proceedings of the REAPS Technical Symposium. Paper No. 25: Integrating Shipyard Design and Manufacturing Functions into an Existing CAD/CAM System.

Computer assisted process planning can be a first step toward the integrated use of computers in the design and manufacturing process to improve productivity in batch manufacturing. The key to the process of integration is a part feature recognition method to analyze and retrieve manufacturing processes and arrive at least-cost designs consistently linked to "best" manufacturing processes. Major problems are incompatible computers, software; and people.

Proceedings of the REAPS Technical Symposium. Paper No. 22: Design for Production. The traditional role of the Ship Designer is the preparation of an overall design of vessel which will have a performance satisfying the owner's Statement of Requirements. The concept of Design for Production, however, requires that, in satisfying the Statement of Requirement, the Ship Designer should also give attention to ease of production. This suggests, therefore, two aspects of the overall design, namely: design for performance design for production and there are others, not considered here, such as design for repair and maintenance, and ergonomic design. Clearly, there will be areas of inter-action and the role of the Ship Designer could be seen in this context as one of arbiter, having the ultimate responsibility of deciding whether performance or production considerations should take precedence in any particular case or the nature of the compromise to be reached. Many of the procedures necessary involve consideration of every feature of the ship from the overall viewpoint. Any tendency to divide design into the traditional elements of steelwork, outfit, engineering and piping would provide a totally inadequate basis upon which to base effective Design for Production.

The Integrated Programs for Aerospace-Vehicle Design (IPAD) National Symposium was held September 17-19, 1980 in Denver, Colorado and was attended by some 420 people from the aerospace, computer, automotive and allied industries and agencies. The Symposium was sponsored by NASA and the IPAD Industry Technical Advisory Board. In lieu of a summary of the presentations given at that conference, reproduced herein is the official IPAD Executive Summary.