A Systematic Approach to Producibility and Lessons Learned for Naval Shipbuilding

Abstract

Producibility refers to lowering of acquisition costs of a system without degradation to system performance. The Navy has conducted many efforts in pursuit of improved ship producibility, but no systematic methodology or study format is currently implemented in Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). Two factors which suggest that a standard, systematic approach to ship producibility should be implemented are the large size of the NAVSEA design organization with its myriad of ship programs, and the requirement of access and manipulation of large volumes of digital data and process documentation. A "Producibility Framework" is offered which models producibility in the ship design and construction process as an iterative algorithm in which producibility concepts are identified, evaluated, incorporated into or rejected from the design, and examined to provide lessons learned and feedback. The framework is described using the DDG-51 Guided Missile Destroyer as the major illustrative case.