Towards a different view on ship design: The development of ships observed through a social?technological perspective

Towards a different view on ship design: The development of ships observed through a social?technological perspective

Van Bruinessen, T.M.
Smulders, F.E.H.M.
Hopman, J.J.

Industrial Design Engineering

Product Innovatie Management

2013-06-23

The research this paper reports on aims to develop a design and engineering strategy for complex ships in between incremental and radical innovation. The majority of European ship-design industry concentrates on the development of complex, one-off ‘specials’ for the offshore industry, like dredgers, drill ships, pipelaying ships, et cetera. This industry is complex, not just in terms of the industrial structure but also in the terms of the object. To control the complexity the industry uses large and expansive knowledge bases that support the design, engineering and manufacturing activities. The focus of the academic research in this field is close to practice and dominantly aims at developing knowledge and tools that supports the present engineering practices. As these strategies are aimed at controlling the complexity, they leave very little room for more innovative developments. On the other side of the spectrum there is a ship-design practice that does allow radical ship design: design and engineering from a blank sheet of paper. Not surprising that these projects are laborious and expensive. The space in between those two design strategies seems unaddressed in literature and is only occasionally found in practice. The design of complex structures literature appears to be scarce, even though this is an area where European ship-design industry is heavily involved. We interviewed stakeholders from ship industry, looked into the design literature to describe the present situation and finally performed cases studies in other fields of application for inspiration. Based on the case studies we illustrate an alternative design strategy that leaves more space for innovation without starting from scratch. This focuses on the complex interactions between the different levels of decomposition in a complex structure such as a ship. We will illustrate that the wide range of actors involved in these designs make such a change in industry to a sociotechnical challenge.

ship design
innovation
design
C-K theory

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7a4e7435-2916-45c1-89f9-7d2842662621

IPDMC 2013: 20th International Product Development Management Conference, Paris, France, 23-25 June 2013

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 The Author(s)