Automatic Generation of a Detailed Outfitting Planning and Determining the Effect of Multi-Skilled Mounting Teams

Automatic planning literature for shipbuilding has historically only addressed the hull-related production processes, such as section building and erection. However, the outfitting process has become increasingly important for shipyards building complex ships. Rose et al. [1] developed a method for automatically generating a detailed outfitting planning, but never test the method's feasibility on a complete complex ship. This paper presents a test case of a pipelaying ship where this planning method produced a high quality outfitting planning. Furthermore, the method also allows shipyards to quantitatively assess outfitting-related strategic decisions. This paper uses the developed method to determine the impact of implementing multi-skilled mounting teams on the outfitting process. This analysis found that such teams can improve the flexibility of workforce allocation, but have little effect on the required movement of mounting teams between work-sites.