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WorkShip Architecture

Planning and scheduling is a complex task in any large item manufacturing or maintenance organization, and the shipbuilding industry is no exception. While planning and scheduling requirements of shipbuilding have become more complex, the methodologies for performing planning and scheduling have not kept pace. The result has been wide-spread inefficiencies in manufacturing activities including flow time for ship construction and repair, unnecessarily high inventories, resource waste, and low shipbuilding agility.

KBSI, with funding from the University of New Orleans, worked in conjunction with Bender Shipbuilding and Repair Co., GCRMTC, and John Lontos to develop a novel software tool kit--WorkShip™--for shipyard work planning and scheduling. This kit synthesizes software from prior KBSI work including the Workload Project Planner, Workload Transition Testbed (WTT™), and the Workload Simulator (WorkSim®). These tools utilize MS Project, WITNESS (Lanner Ltd.'s simulation software), and KBSI's scheduling engine, Work Planner. The software kit provides an open architecture to allow for "plug compatibility" with a number of operating environments.

Customizing the software to meet the planning and scheduling needs of the shipbuilding industry involved a number of steps. Headed by Dr. Mike Graul, our research group first collected the necessary data relating to operations, processing times, resources, constraints, etc. This allowed us to both understand the problem and to document this understanding.

Our next step was to develop more detailed models, using our base model as a template, of long-term and short-term workload planning situations or scenarios. With this information we were next able to begin adapting WorkSim® and the WTT™ technology to address each planning and scheduling problem. The final step was testing and validating our design and training managers in its use.

In keeping with our expertise in methods, KBSI also developed a comprehensive Shipyard Planning and Scheduling Methodology Document that could guide planning and scheduling activities throughout the shipbuilding industry. Both the software architecture and of the methodology, by bringing together scientific principles of sustainment and user-centered technology, mark an innovative approach to shipyard planning and scheduling.