The Potential of Big Data Analysis in the Shipbuilding Industry: A Way of Increasing Competitiveness

It is possible to exploit potentials of Big Data in the shipbuilding industry in order to increase efficiency and company performance. Big Data analysis will probably have a great impact on strengthening the competitiveness in the whole sector, providing various types of benefits and effective support to the decision-making system. Academics maintain that analysis methods and algorithms can offer spe-cific guidelines to managers and practitioners in order to satisfy their information needs. Even though it is recognized that the techniques for Big Data analysis are relevant, only a few studies provide practical guidelines on how to apply these techniques in specific industries like shipbuilding. This preliminary study aims to develop a conceptual framework of Big Data anal-ysis based on the value chain approach. By using a deductive methodology, the framework is built taking into consideration four phases of the value chain in the shipbuilding industry - i.e. pre-production, design, production, and post-production. For its relevance, the study considers the pre-production phase, trying to classify data sources, analysis methods, and algorithms for the main activities of this node and also providing various suggestions to shipbuilding managers and practitioners. The researchers develop the framework by considering secondary data collected from the literature analysis. Our results can successfully support decision making in shipbuilding companies, making processes and operations more cost-effective and helping companies be more competitive. Specifically, in the pre-production node this will lead to real-time demand forecasting and a more reliable estimation of initial production costs.