Keeping the Ships on Schedule

Who wants to ride on a leaky ship? No one. Not you, not members of a naval unit.

To ensure naval mission success, submarines and surface combatants must be as safe and as streamlined as possible and needs to be able to withstand all kinds of harsh conditions. And the systems they house have to be built to the same requirements and integrated seamlessly.

Engineers at DCNS, headquartered in Paris, are no strangers to the complex design requirements these types of naval systems call for. The company designs submarines, surface combatants, and develops associated systems and infrastructure.

On March 16, 2016, DCNS delivered the FREMM frigate Languedoc intended for the French Navy. The frigate was officially accepted by the Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR), an international organization for the through-life management of cooperative defense equipment programs.

But, like the Languedoc, the systems and infrastructure on all ships–such as nuclear and conventional propulsion systems, radar, missile, and communications materials—needs to work together with perfect timing. They can’t fail.

It goes without saying that the engineers responsible for all these systems need to work together as well.

DCNS engineers must manage complexity and part and assembly integration to provide clients, industrial systems and equipment partners, and supply chain members with the tools and digital interfaces. Daily, sometimes several times a day, they’ll have to share designs, make informed decisions, and make sure they’re working on the most recent design.

With that in mind, the company recently turned to marine and offshore industry tools that share the common 3DExperience platform, including product lifecycle management and CAD software, from Dassault Systèmes. The integrated solutions allow the ship maker to increase building capacity and flexibility, said Herve Guillou, DCNS president and chief executive officer.

“Agility—the capacity to provide timely, reliable and efficient answers to our clients’ demands while insuring world-class system integration and operational, cost-effective lifecycle solutions—is a significant competitive advantage,” Guillou said.

With the platform, DCNS can create a virtual twin of their products across all lifecycles, which will enable cost-effective system design and production, he said.

The marine and offshore tools and platforms within the overall 3DExperience platform includes business tools for every organization within a company–from marketing to sales to engineering, and the Designed for Sea Industry Solution Experiences platform that lets shipyard engineers design, simulate, and analyze their ships while complying with regulations and classification standards.

Another solution, On Time To Sea, is used for collaborative planning and to monitor project status while Express for Sea addresses all stages of a marine project from requirements definition to design, manufacturing, and project management. Finally, the Optimized Production for Sea helps ensure manufactured products correctly adhere to design specifications, which reduces the risk of errors and time-consuming, costly rework.

Suppliers with access to the platforms can see the manufacturing planning and corresponding design information and improve their their efficiency as well.