At present, China’s shipbuilding industry is in an era of revolution, the insiders generally believe that the storm of intelligent shipbuilding will profoundly affect the future of China’s shipbuilding industry.

Made in China 2025 has put marine engineering equipment and high-tech ship as on the of the ten key development areas and has clarified the development focus and objective in the next 10 years. On May 18, 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) published the draft of Guidance for Promoting Intelligent Shipbuilding, for comments and suggestions, further strengthing the support to intelligent shipbuilding. The Vice Minister of MIIT Xin Guobin said, “during the period of the 13thFive-Year Plan, the industry will promote quickly the combination of new generation of information technology and advanced shipbuilding technology, promote intelligent manufacturing, improve shipbuilding quality and efficiency, reduce the cost and consumption of resource energy. ”

Against this background, domestic shipbuilding companies such as Nantong Cosco Khi Ship Engineering (NACKS), Dalian Shipbuilding Industry (DSIC), 724 Research Institute, CSIC, Pengli Technology Group, Jiangnan Shipyard Group and other companies have all tried to “water-testing” intelligent shipbuilding.

The general manager of NACKS Han Chengmin said, the key of promoting intelligent shipbuilding is big data support: “in order to realize intelligent manufacturing, there should be a big data support at the first, which needs accumulation over 5～10 years,and then filter the data and change it to the useful date in the process of the whole manufacturing, thereby reducing the cost and realizing zero inventory manufacturing.”

The chief engineer of Jiangnan Shipyard Group Hu Keyi believed that: “the development target for intelligent shipbuilding is to fully implement the connection of DMU in the whole design, construction and management, and as the single data source, to realize multiple platforms and multilateral coordination of design, material procurement and distribution. To have a breakthrough in the key generic technology of intelligent shipyard, build several demonstrative intelligent shipyard, make the ship performance, shipbuilding plan, procurement, construction efficiency, and the construction quality of main ship type in line with the level of developed countries, and make the design and layout, construction level and quality of complex ship type as such that the layout type and volume type can reach the level of developed countries, adaptability to the demand for complex ship types will be greatly improved.

The big date expert Tu Zipei has ever said publicly, “the real manufacturing in the future, or the intelligent manufacturing must meet the manufacture of personalized needs.” At present, the popularization of data collection technology and the improvement of data analysis ability has placed the traditional industry in a broader, more refined and more personalized space, and make it more suitable for the non-standardization and customization features of ship products.

The revolution and future for intelligent shipbuilding

Reporter Li Xiaochuan