Production design:

The detailed specification of a manufactured items parts and their relationship to the whole. A
product design needs to take into account how the item will perform its intended functionality
in an efficient, safe and reliable manner
Principles of design for production in shipbuilding:
Design to reduce production costs to a minimum, compatible with the requirements of the
vessel to fulfil its operational functions with acceptable reliability and efficiency.

Primary objectives:
 Too produce a design, which represents an acceptable compromise between the
demands of performance and production, and where appropriate takes into account the
needs of overhaul, repair, and maintenance.
 To ensure that all design features are compatible with known characteristics of the
shipyard facilities.
 To apply the individual design for production principles and procedures insofar as they
are relevant to the particular vessel and to the particular shipyard where the vessel is to
be built.
 To coordinate the interrelationship between the machinery, electrical and outfitting
work with the structural work, in order to create a fully integrated design.
Implementing Design for Production Procedures:
All departments within the shipyard exist to support the production effort. Design and
drawings offices are of particular importance because so many of the early decisions they take,
irrevocably affect production activities.
Traditionally, drafts people have been used to produce drawings, which, in effect, are
technical pictures, rather than being used to produce sets of working instructions. The need to
provide specific workstation information to the shop floor will be achieved only by a change
of procedures within the technical office.
For some time leading shipyards in many parts of the world have subdivided contract
cycle times in such a way as to allow an extended period prior to production for detailed design,
planning, and production engineering activities. This has facilitated the development of design
for production techniques and procedures. The short production cycle time characteristic of
those shipyards requires a longer design lead time to carry out the necessary technical work; as
a result, overall contract cycle times have not, until relatively recently, been significantly
shorter. The extensive application of design of production has, however, now realized shorter
lead times while still improving productivity.
Design for production is primarily concerned with designing work content out of the
vessel and with improving the efficiency of production. The achievement of these objectives
will in turn lead to higher labor and facility utilization and to shorter cycle times. High labor
utilization and better use of the working day will come from improved work flew as interim
products related directly to work stations are incorporated in the design in increasing numbers.
Reduced cycle times will come from a reduction in work content and a ship breakdown geared
to the yard’s facilities.
Many design for production applications, particularly relating to geometry and block
breakdown, do not of themselves affect lead time significantly, and a start may be made on
their implementation even in cases of very short lead time. Other applications, for example
outfit assembly techniques, do require an investment both in time and money to realize the
potential benefits. In these cases, it will be necessary for each individual shipyard to review its
own position and to define an implementation program.
In both cases, however, the implementation will in fact consist of two parallel yet
interrelated processes.
 Generalized experience and practice gained by systematically attempting to
apply design for production principles by the ship designer on designs which
are produced at the inquiry stage and may or may not. be built. Experience can
also be gained by looking at the published designs of production facilities in
overseas yards. Visits by ship designers to overseas yards should incorporate a
study of the extent to which the principles and procedures put forward in this
manual have already been implemented.
 Specific experience from ships actually built by the yard. This is gained by
examining achievements and setbacks resulting from the application of new
design for production ideas.
Experience gained on specific contracts can be added to the general body of experience
if shipyards consciously decide to implement design for production in this way and if they
involve all appropriate members of the technical and management team. Thus, design decisions
may routinely combine the requirements of design for performance with those of production.
Lead time requirement is a product of the level of technology employed in the
engineering office (for example, the extent of the use of computers) and the balance chosen
within total contract cycle time between lead time and production time. In making the transition
to longer lead times, the order book will be a dominant factor as continuity of ship production
must be assured. This implies that the implementation of design for production procedures
must be phased to suit each individual yard.
For the design/production integration to be carried out effectively requires properly
educated, trained, shop-floor-experienced people. In Japan and Scandinavia in particular,
shipbuilders have had a clear policy for many years for the training and develepoment of
shipbuilding engineers. The U.S. shipbuilding industry as a whole now needs to reassess its
approach to the training of shipbuilding engineers. Too many designers are in the position of
having to make major design decisions having barely seen, let alone worked in a shipyard. And
in many cases where shipyard-based technical people move to ship or production management,
they do so at too high a level. In Japan and Scandinavia, the approach is from the bottom UP,
with well qualified young people getting direct shop floor experience.
An interim solution might be for individual shipyards to give young graduate naval
architects and engineers early shop floor experience by using them in the role of field or staff
engineers. Typically, a Staff engineer would work within a production area or workshop or on
board and would be the interface between production and technical functions. A network of
engineers communicating and providing feedback to ail stages of design would make a
significant contribution to design/production integration.
Finally, another major feature of the successful implementation of design for
production is discipline. Before work starts, the whole manufacturing and construction process
must be thought through and laid cut in detail on paper. This preproduction effort will be largely
wasted unless production has the discipline to follow the determined program, methods and
procedures. Apart from the need for discipline, it is also clear that if production is to follow the
"plan," then it must be fully involved in the thinking stages.