AVEVA Boosts Shipbuilding Industry to Speed up Digital Transformation

Gan Fenglu Liu Zhiliang

Digital transformation is a hot topic right now, and digital technology is accelerating to reshape the way industries work, including the shipbuilding industry. On November 1, AVEVA's Asia Pacific Executive Vice President Evgeny Fedotov told the AVEVA World 2018 Greater China Users' Conference that at present, digit has become a new factor of production for enterprises. The benefits brought by this production factor can help traditional industrial manufacturing enterprises improve the whole life cycle of their products, explore new growth points and meet the challenges posed by increasingly complex and uncertain manufacturing models. In the field of shipbuilding, as an industry leader,AVEVA is willing to help customers gain higher value from these total digital overall system solutions.

Provide a digital integrated solution

On September 5, 2017, the French industrial group Schneider Electric and AVEVA issued a joint statement,agreeing to Schneider Electric holding AVEVA, to expand the global range of their products. In March of this year,AVEVA and Schneider Electric's software business were formally merged,becoming the global leader in engineering and industrial software. Evgeny Fedotov said, "The merger with Schneider Electric's industrial software business not only makes AVEVA's original business advantages more effective, but also, in the tide of digital transformation in the global industrial field, AVEVA continues to develop new and richer solutions that cover every aspect of the entire life cycle of the digital transformation of enterprise assets and operations to meet the need for digital transformation in the maritime industry, and the solutions we offer are moving with the times."

Wan Shiping, general manager of AVEVA Greater China, said AVEVA currently offers complete solutions in asset performance management,monitoring and control management,process and schedule management,operations and optimization management.If we look at the stage division of the industrial chain, from process design to basic design, detailed design, production design, technical design, and then to procurement process management, to subsequent performance management,to analysis, data acquisition control analysis and centralized decision making, supporting operation and maintenance, etc., AVEVA can provide integrated solutions. So far, in this process area, the whole industry process, AVEVA is currently a software company that offers the most comprehensive solutions. In the future, AVEVA will continue to derive its products around physical factories,digital factories, asset management,and operations management to carry on the upgrade and give the digitization transformation greater benefit. AVEVA will provide more integration services to help customers tap data value and achieve digital transformation. He hopes that AVEVA will provide customers with solutions that meet the development needs of enterprises and at different stages through the integration of their own business, and support the digital transformation of customers in various industries throughout the process.

So how should the enterprise understand digitization and judge the effect of digital transformation? Wan Shiping believes that the meaning of digital transformation can be understood from three aspects: first, digitization can change the business model; second, digitization can change the company's revenue; and third, digitization will generate new value.When enterprises plan their own digital path, the first question to think about is what benefits digitization can bring in future. Digital strategy is a starting point, the purpose is not only to solve the existing key problems or problems in the process, and 3 years, 5 years or even longer time should be considered during digital construction design.

Solution of tailormade system for Chinese shipbuilding industry

In shipbuilding, AVEVA is an absolute dominant provider of life-cycle solutions and services, with 90% of the world's top 50 ship enterprises being customers of AVEVA. From the domestic point of view, the top 10 shipyards are AVEVA customers. Wan Shiping said,in different industry areas, AVEVA will provide different solutions. AVEVA has more than 50 years of experience in shipbuilding, and most of China's shipyards are currently using AVEVA software. Through cooperation with Chinese shipyards on a number of new projects, by tailoring, the two sides can explore the application of new concepts to improve the overall international competitiveness of Chinese shipyards,while also helping AVEVA remain a leader in the industry.

According to the introduction,ships go through many different stages in different life cycles, and AVEVA provides a comprehensive set of firstclass products and solutions to protect each stage. For example, products in engineering, such as AVEVA DiagramsTM,AVEVA Initial DesignTMare mainly used to create and manage engineering information, which can effectively provide production efficiency; products in design such as, AVEVA OutfittingTM,AVEVA Hull Detailed DesignTMare mainly used to provide professional grade ship design function, and convert the engineering information to threedimensional detailed drawing design;and products in management such as AVEVA GlobalTM, AVEVA E3D InsightTMare used to realize efficient project and resource management; and in construction, AVEVA Automated Plate NestingTMis mainly used to support production and construction process, while in operation AVEVA NET Workhub and DashboardTMis mainly used to support many complex work tasks involved in safe and efficient asset operation.

Wan Shiping said, digital development is an important development direction of the current shipbuilding industry. As the information center of projects and facilities, digital assets flow within each system and exist in each application, and is the unity of trusted information in each file and model.Digital assets exist synchronously with their physical assets, are a platform for recording changes and predicting their future. In the face of this trend,AVEVA has also put forward a digital asset solution to help customers use their information, free themselves from the information island, and verify it, so that the information can flow between systems and be shared among disciplines to enhance professionalism and improve performance. In this way, customers can control project costs, ensure schedule,maximize uptime and solve complex problems.

At present, the development momentum of luxury cruise ships in China is very strong, especially the construction of large localized luxury cruise ships has been put on the agenda.Wan said AVEVA had already paid close attention to the market potential in China's luxury cruise construction sector and had done well in terms of market development. At present, the polar cruise ship in a domestic shipyard is designed with AVEVA software. At the same time, AVEVA has reached a cooperation agreement with a domestic shipyard on the cooperation of a luxury cruise ship. “The degree of localization of this cruise ship is very high, and so is the level of technology and management," Wan said. In the process of domestic shipyard and cooperation, AVEVA not only sees the advantages of some existing software, but also sees the future customer's use environment and competition environment, which is an important strategic consideration in the process of providing the whole solution for AVEVA. Integrating different phases of software into a whole solution, from digital to intelligent, to get through the whole process, is what AVEVA is doing right now.