Blending custom built with assembly line
One of the more interesting site visits I’ve been on was a recent tour of Celebrity Cruises’ forthcoming ship, the Celebrity Xcel, at shipbuilder Chantiers de l’Atlantique’s drydock in Saint-Nazaire, France. The facility is the largest assembly dock in Europe, with 3,800 employees and another 6,200 contractors on site.
Shipbuilding is a complicated process. Even within Classes of ships, the individual cruise ships vary somewhat. Once the ships are put into service, the company receives feedback on everything and from everyone — from the crew to the engineering team to the passengers.
Modularity is a key. The actual construction work starts on dry land, as the first steel is cut, and these large pieces of the hull are welded together into what are called blocks. Eventually, different blocks are loaded into the drydock, a large berth that can be flooded with water later in the construction process. Putting the ship together is like working with enormous Lego pieces. More than 40 blocks comprise the ship; these are built individually on land and eventually moved into place with enormous cranes. Then, they’re connected and welded together, and work inside continues until the next piece is finished.
This process is very much the opposite of a manufacturing assembly line. They’re building one ship that’s unique in many ways, even if it has past siblings from the same Class. Restaurants and public areas and even overall sizes can vary.
Yet, the construction of the crew and passenger cabins is very much a traditional assembly line process. You need hundreds of specific types and sizes of cabins, so the work here is very repetitive and predictable. Cabins are built as 80% finished products that are eventually hoisted onto the ship’s superstructure and “plugged in” once installed.
Chantiers de l’Atlantique has a virtual engine room area, where early in the design process, engineers can move around in a 3D simulation of the engine room to coordinate piping, cabling, equipment, and componentry. Here, Smart Mind is used as the CAD program. The team then uses Unity (a cross-platform game engine) to take the Smart drawings and view them through the virtual reality goggles.
For the cabin design, which also happens on site, Solid Edge is used, said Eric Perennou, senior project manager of Edge Class.
“Solid Edge is useful when you have plenty of parts to specify, as per the cabins,” he said. “It was chosen for this reason and because it was easy to interface. Also, for the production, it was helpful. There are many areas where we don’t build [the subsystems] ourselves, so here we don’t need detailed bills of materials. And Solid Edge allows us to have easier access to the volumes of a space, as well as the settings, the lighting, and so on.”
I came away impressed in how one project can so seamlessly include both assembly line work and custom, one-of-a-kind manufacturing. And that’s good to keep in mind for your next big project. Sometimes the answer isn’t one way of doing things, but a blend of very different processes.
Paul J. Heney – VP, Editorial Director
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Filed Under: DIGITAL ISSUES • DESIGN WORLD