Book Description
The shipbuilding industry in the United States has become postured to increased competitiveness within America & with the Foreign shipyards. With an expected decline in Navy work availability due to a decrease in the United States defense budgets and an expected increase in commercial work availability, competition is challenging the industry to reduce schedule time and lower construction costs while maintaining a standard of high quality. To make these objectives reality, through-put must increase by maximizing efficiency, thus saving time, material and money. Piping system is one of the biggest components in the outfitting cost of a ship's fabrication. This project reevaluates the concepts of a flexible pipe shop fabrication system as presented in earlier studies performed in the late 1970's and early 1980's. These studies were based on steel pipe as the norm: however, with the increased use of copper-nickel (CUNi) and stainless steel pipe within the industry, evaluation of how the industry is adjusting to this increase in pipe mix was performed. The emphasis of this project was to investigate and implement pipe fabrication and material handling systems that are designed for the mix of materials currently exhibited in Navy and commercial shipbuilding. The intention of this project was to do the following: * Identify constraints imposed on the pipe shops surveyed due to the mix. * Identify overall constraints imposed on the NASSCO pipe shop due to the mix and current layout. * Identify implemented alternatives to relieving the constraints. * Identify planned or possible alternatives for the NASSCO pipe shop.
