ECOPRODIGI: SYNTHESIS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY PILOTS

The ECOPRODIGI project brought together 21 partner organisations, supported by six associated partners, from around the Baltic Sea Region through three years of intensive work. 

The partnership was diverse, consisting of different types of organisations from five countries (Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden), including research institutions, enterprises, business support organisations, and expert organisations. Approximately half of the organisations represented enterprises. Having end-user enterprises involved since the beginning of the project has been a major benefit, as the project has responded to the real needs of the maritime industry.

The aim of the project was to make maritime processes more eco-efficient and sustainable through the development and piloting of digital solutions and training modules. The project further visualised the digital future of the maritime industry developing several roadmaps with which maritime organisations could benchmark their actions when planning their future operations. 

The project did not overlook policy makers. In fact, it organised policy seminars, urging policy makers, businesses, research organisations, and several other stakeholders to discuss development needs of digitalisation together. The project also drafted policy recommendations and a policy agenda for policy makers on how to support and push the industry to become more eco-efficient and sustainable through digital development.

Based on this, ECOPRODIGI included five work packages (WPs), which focused on three technology cases (see figure). This story map concerns work done in WP3, i.e. ‘Solving eco-efficiency bottlenecks through digital solutions’, with a focus on Technology Case 3, ‘Optimising shipyard processes’. The objective is to introduce the piloted solutions and concepts implemented at two shipyards, present the process of developing a digital solution, and synthesise challenges faced and key takeaways. This story map is produced by the University of Turku, and the summarised findings are based on interviews conducted with project partners that participated in the work done in these involved shipyards (see participants at the end of the document).

The shipbuilding process includes several working phases, from the order and design of a new build to dock and sea trial. Moreover, the building process relies heavily on the use of material and several man-hours. The ships are built using a special construction method, with large blocks built separately [1]. When the construction of blocks is completed, they are fitted together to construct the ship’s hull [2]. The working environment at a shipyard is large both in terms of space needed for the construction and in terms of the number of people involved in the construction. Moreover, a great number of subcontractors are involved in the shipbuilding process. For example, the blocks are often not manufactured in the same place as where the ship is assembled. Subcontractors first produce entire blocks, which they then deliver to the customer shipyard. If changes are made in the overall shipbuilding process, they may simultaneously influence several stakeholders.

[1] [2] See e.g Park J., Lee D. & Zhu J. (2014). An integrated approach for ship block manufacturing process performance evaluation: Case from a Korean shipbuilding company. International Journal of Production Economics. 156, 214–222.; Tokola H. A., Niemi E. & Remes H. (2016). Block Erection in the Event of Delays in Shipbuilding: A Scenario-Based Approach. Journal of Ship Production and Design. 32(1), 37–49.

Several ECOPRODIGI partners decided to dig deeper into the shipbuilding process to analyse eco-efficiency bottlenecks and inefficiencies in specific working phases. The work took place in Lithuania and Finland and evolved around two core themes.

1) The Finnish supplier enterprises, called Carinafour and Sininen Polku, studied the shipyard process and supply chain management at the Meyer Turku shipyard in Finland. Focus was especially placed on the production of air conditioning rooms and on the information flow between suppliers within the value chain. These enterprises identified improvement potential that could be solved by the optimisation of operations and the use of digital solutions. 

2) A Lithuanian enterprise, Western Baltic Engineering, purchased and pilot-tested a 3D scanner for its retrofit and repair projects in Lithuania. Simultaneously, the end-user en-terprises, Meyer Turku and Western Baltic Engineering, collaborated with OSK-ShipTech, Chalmers University of Technology, and Klaipeda Science and Technology Park along with Carinafour, Sininen Polku, and Machine Technology Center Turku to test the 3D technology in a customer-supplier project. The shipyard in Lithuania produces ready-made blocks, which are sent to Meyer Turku to be mounted to the ship under construction. The aim of the project’s work was to build a common understanding of how 3D scanning could improve the efficiency of this process. In practice, the aim was to optimise the communication of 3D scans between the receiving shipyard and producing yard and to generate a set of guidelines to standardise the ways of working.

Click for more information on the ECOPRODIGI research report:  Maritime industry processes in the Baltic Sea Region. Synthesis of eco-inefficiencies and the potential of digital technologies for solving them. ECOPRODIGI Research Report 2020. Elisa Aro, Niels Gorm Malý Rytter, Teemu Itälinna.  

The inefficiencies and bottlenecks found in the operations set the course for the development of new solutions and concepts. Several solutions were created and piloted in the two shipyard environments in Finland and Lithuania.  

At the Meyer Turku shipyard, Carinafour developed several tools and a production system to improve the production efficiency of an air conditioning (AC) room. Carinafour acts as a subcontractor operating the AC rooms that will later be fitted into a ship. In practice, this means that the new ship needs an air conditioning system and ducts that are made as readily available as possible before they are lifted up to the ship hull. Carinafour developed new digital solutions for this production to manage the process from the warehouse to assembly in order to make the operations more efficient and save in terms of both materials and working hours. 

Carinafour developed the following solutions, which are also introduced by Vili Norring from Carinafour in the attached video.

In this process, work planning is made and work planners use CALS material flow system for creating work packages for specific work tasks during the assembly phase. The work package includes all pre-fabricated material that a worker needs during the day to eliminate the need to search for materials from different places. A work planner creates a work package in the system that includes information on the material needed and the timing of the delivery. 

When the work packages are ordered for production, they appear in the warehouse management system, which monitors data regarding the picking, packaging, and dispatch of the material. The warehouse personnel use the warehouse management system, which runs in real-time. The warehouse system ensures material availability in the production. 

The reporting platform enables data collection of deviations and defects that appear in operations. Information can be combined, for example, from the warehouse management system and daily management. The users of this system are mainly the responsible site managers but also work planners.

This tool was developed to monitor the deliveries of work packages from the warehouse all the way to the installation site. The site managers and the personnel responsible for the deliveries use this tool. They can acknowledge successful delivery of the work package in the system as well as register the start and completion of the assembly.

This system produces hourly reports to facilitate the monitoring of data received from various tools. In addition, the system produces different report outlooks for different user groups based on their needs. With Power BI (i.e., Business Intelligence), personnel may, for example, monitor that a sufficient amount of material is available in the warehouse for the creation of work packages.

The following figure illustrates the different stages that Carinafour focused on in the AC room production as well as the types of elements that were included in each stage. The benefits of these solutions are that the enterprise has better capability of tracking the material availability as well as the material and man-hours used during production. Material waste is decreased, as the enterprise only orders just enough material as is needed. Moreover, access to data enables the continuous improvement of performance within this specific production phase. Additionally, Carinafour’s representative mentioned that workers did not before the project report whether they, for example, spent extra working time looking for materials. Therefore, no baseline data existed from which to compare improvements. However, during the project, improved understanding was achieved regarding the effect of delays and deviations. All the solutions developed by Carinafour have scaling potential to other end-users outside the project as well as to other industry contexts, such as the construction industry.

As previously mentioned, the subcontracting network is large in a shipyard environment. In order for the entire shipbuilding process to progress and to ensure the ship is completed for the customer in time, all the subcontracted products also need to be completed in time. Therefore, it is essential to acknowledge the risks that may take place within the supply chain. Sininen Polku, with the help of Meyer Turku, studied the types of supplier risks that could take place in the shipbuilding process. Turnkey suppliers produce completed product and service entities to the shipyards. They have only limited responsibility to share information on the execution of work. However, a detailed level visibility to the execution of work would be needed but it is difficult for the customer to require such visibility from the supplier. This type of improvement should be agreed upon with the whole network to become a standard working method. Therefore, Sininen Polku recommended the shipyard to design a risk management model in collaboration with turnkey suppliers to ensure that risk management is done according to the same principles across the whole network, but the decision to share the data beyond own company can be independently opted in/out. Sininen Polku further conceptualised the idea on what kind of data should be collected and how the data could be visualised with digital tools to monitor and manage these risks. 

In Lithuania, 3D technology was utilised for two main purposes: optimising retrofitting and block assembly. Several activities were carried out to maximise the use of 3D scanning in this project (see figure). Information was shared between the partners, and, simultaneously, Chalmers University of Technology helped visualise the ship’s 3D scanning data using a form of 3D simulation that could be easily accessed, compared, and studied. Western Baltic Engineering (WBE) and Klaipeda Science and Technology Park (KSTP) worked on improving retrofitting projects in Lithuania with the help of other partner organisations. Later, the efficiency of block assembly was investigated as a joint effort of various project partners in several countries. Specifically, hackathon events were organised in Klaipeda and Gothenburg, and a workshop was organised in Turku. The events gathered all the partners involved in the pilot work to test how 3D scanners should be used, what kind of methodology is needed for 3D measurements, and how the scanning can improve the quality of block assembly at a shipyard. However, creating digital tools for visualisation of 3D scanning data is not sufficient; the quality and compatibility of the data is vital, and the visualisation can only be as good as the gathered data allows. Based on the key takeaways from these events, the partners concluded that, for the scanning to be as efficient as possible, further standardisation, at least between business partners, was needed. For this purpose, a document including a set of guidelines was created to ensure that the collection, use, and transfer of data could be conducted in as harmonised a manner as possible. This document describes methods and provides recommendations regarding the use 3D scanning in shipyards and among the subcontracting network, which any organisation can use, also organisations outside the ECOPRODIGI project. To maximise the use of 3D technology, the piloting partners also organised training workshops to transfer knowledge and best practices outside the project. 

For more information on the 3D guidelines, please read the document on the project website:  Berglund et al. (2020) Guidelines for 3D documentation of ship block geometry - A process description, https://ecoprodigi.eu/publications. 

The development of new digital solutions involves several phases. The enterprise Carinafour summarised the process, specifically describing it with five different stages, as presented in the figure. The first phase starts by analysing the current state of the process in focus. The next phase is the development of a roadmap, which describes what actions need to be taken in order to improve the process. The following step involves creating the solution with relevant partners and then testing it in real operations. Lastly, when the first version of the solution is ready and has been tested, the solution is continuously improved upon the feedback received from the end-users. This process description is applicable to the development of several digital solutions.

The project partners assessed the results of the pilot tests of the digital solutions. The pilot activities indicated that several eco-efficiency benefits can be gained through optimising processes and using new digital technologies.

The attached table summarises the benefits achieved, as described by Carinafour.

The ECOPRODIGI partners gained new knowledge about the usage of 3D technology during the project and noted that 3D technology has major advantages in boosting competitiveness in the shipyard environment. They saw great benefits in using 3D scanning for retrofitting and block assembly process. 

During the retrofitting phase, ships are usually only inspected at the repair yard. With 3D scanning, it would possible to scan the ship while it is still in operation, and the new scans could be compared to those taken during the construction phase to help discern whether repairs are needed and to plan the repair work in advance. The scans could be made without interruptions in operation, and the images could be virtually sent out to the repair yard, which means that it could start preparing for the repair work even before the ship arrives to the yard. This allows the ship to return to operation more quickly, which saves both time and money. According to the partners, retrofitting processes, including scrubbers installations, may extend the ship’s life cycle and decrease its environmental burden. The use of 3D scanning in these retrofitting processes, helps the enterprises to upgrade the ships quickly and minimise the amount of time that the ship spends at the yard.

In the block assembly, 3D technology would significantly decrease the amount of time and extra work needed for installation. For example, the project partners mentioned that often deviations appear on the blocks when they arrive to the customer shipyard. These deviations need to be fixed when the blocks are mounted to form the ship’s hull and it takes extra working hours. A benefit mentioned by a researcher from Chalmers University of Technology regarding  the use of 3D scanning technology relates to the fact that it is possible to digitalise the measurements of a block with millimetre precision. This allows the block manufacturer to detect errors and make improvements to the block before it leaves for assembling, thus improving the overall quality of the products. Simultaneously, the receiving shipyard can start preparing even for the smallest of anomalies and details, which saves time during the assembly phase and diminishes the need for expensive and sometimes even intrusive rework. Overall, the partners concluded that using 3D scanning data provides higher levels of transparency for both the producer and the shipyard, which may further help conform to the quality standards set by the customer. 

Based on the project findings, the use of 3D scanning technology improves the quality control of the products, reduces material, energy and time spent in rework that results from deviations, decreases the amount of time spent in operations, and thus saves both time and resources.

In fact, as a result of the project, Western Baltic Engineering was able to set up and commercialise the use of 3D scanning in its daily operations. The project partners forecasted that, in the future, they might use the technology for even better production planning in the shipyards, such as building digital production sites.

Click to see the following video where Jonatan Berglund (Chalmers University of Technology) and Andrius Sutnikas (Klaipeda Science and Technology Park) summarise benefits of 3D scanning in shipyard environments.

In general, all research and development projects face some challenges and learn from the issues they encounter along the way. Based on the interviews conducted with the project partners, the main challenges and/or learnings in ECOPRODIGI were related to the development of digital solutions as well as challenges and/or learnings specifically related to project-level factors. 

The shipbuilding process is multifaceted and involves several phases. Therefore, there are plenty of interfaces between several actors: different work phases follow each other so that each concluded phase affects the work of the following one. Thus, it is crucial that specific tasks are performed at a right time. However, during the project, one of the enterprises noted that there was often a lack of reliability between some of these phases and the planning, which hindered an optimal work flow.

One of the enterprise representatives mentioned that, when implementing and using new digital tools in different work phases, challenges appear in terms of noting who is responsible for each reporting phase. This issue is partly related to a challenge in communication between people. For instance, when new systems are implemented, the consequent changes in the working methods and responsibilities for reporting practices need to be properly communicated to the personnel involved. The same enterprise representative discussed the usability of new digital tools. Specifically, the tools must be user-friendly, and overlapping features of different tools should be solved. Similarly, data retrieved from the digital tools should be easily shared between different target groups. Overall, several interviewees indicated that, to get the best performance out of new technology, it is crucial that it is properly implemented at the involved enterprises. Several partners mentioned that attention must be paid to internal communication and providing training to the personnel regarding the new digital tools.

In one of the interviews, it was noted that scanning large structures, such as the outside of the hull, with 3D technology could be challenging. On the other hand, the project demonstrated that mastering the use of novel technology can also be fast and efficient. Some project partners involved in 3D work were not familiar with the technology at the beginning of the project but received valuable insights regarding the use of 3D scans and measurements over the course of the project. Additionally, it took only a few months for one enterprise to be able to fully commercialise the use of 3D scanning in their operations. Different software systems use and process data differently; this enterprise received a proper introduction from a 3D expert, which helped in the learning process. 

Two interviewees discussed the challenge of integrating different software systems within one enterprise as well as between collaborating enterprises. On the one hand, the integration of new tools into existing IT systems in an enterprise may create challenges that need to be solved. On the other hand, different actors within a supply chain use different kinds of software that may not be compatible with each other. For example, when sharing 3D scanning data, it is important to find appropriate software for the post-processing of the data as well as to improve the current level of standardisation in order to make the data transfer among the actors as smooth as possible.

In general, the day-to-day operations of enterprises occur simultaneously with development work. Two interviewees noted that it is natural that this sometimes creates challenges in projects. For example, in the project it was seen that daily operations are often prioritised over development work. Two respondents mentioned that, if organisational or operational changes take place that affect the development work, such a change must be taken into account, and the work must sometimes be adapted accordingly. This should also be acknowledged in EU-funded projects — in other words, room should be made for adaptability. However, this did not hamper the work in ECOPRODIGI. Several interviewees noted that they succeeded in the development and pilots of digital solutions in real-life production environments. 

One interviewee pointed out that studying 3D scanning applications requires strong cooperation among researchers and shipyard workers from different fields. Another respondent noted that, to make the enterprises willing to share their insight regarding the improved processes, they must realise that developing common standards and ways of working is for the prosperity of every organisation involved instead of being information that must be hidden from competitors. Additionally, in the case of an international project or value chain, differences in work culture must be considered so that people from different organisations in different countries are able to find a common ground.

Several partners mentioned that, when new projects are initiated, it has proven to be crucial to identify a customer need or will to collaborate as well as to find partner organisations with relevant internal departments, including skilled personnel, in order to succeed with the project plan. Indeed, it is essential to find the right employees in the organisation with whom to collaborate. A lack of relevant employees and departments may hinder collaboration at both the start and throughout the duration of the project. In addition, sufficient resources should be allocated for the project so that its objectives can be reached. 

The work package leaders in EU-funded projects have an essential role in keeping all the threads in their hands and maintaining ongoing collaboration. Several partners noted that work package leaders should have active communication with the partners regarding the objectives of the project, progress of the work, and any possible challenges.

The reporting in EU-funded projects may be a new and challenging issue for some partner organisations, especially for enterprises that are newcomers to these projects. This was also the case for some of the enterprises involved in the shipyard case. However, as one of the respondents noted, several new takeaways have been obtained from EU-funded projects, their collaboration models, and their mechanisms, and all these takeaways will be capitalised upon in further project initiatives. 

Based on the ECOPRODIGI project, streamlining processes in the shipyard environment proved to be useful. Several phases in the shipbuilding and repair process were found to involve eco-inefficiencies, including the AC room operations, retrofitting, and block production. The project partners were able to find new, more efficient solutions in all of these production phases. Overall, the 3D technology and digital solutions developed for the determined phases in the shipbuilding process made it possible to achieve notable improvements in terms of eco-efficiency at the involved shipyards in Lithuania and Finland. However, the project partners concluded that this development should not end with the ECOPRODIGI project. A need for continuous improvement in solutions and further development areas emerged in the shipbuilding and repair process, upon which the partners will continue working in the future. 

Besides this storymap , two other story maps in ECOPRODIGI were produced.

 Click this link to access the story map on case 1 'Digital performance monitoring' 

 Click this link to read the story map on case 2 'Optimising cargo stowage' 

For more information on the project, please visit:  ecoprodigi.eu