Development of a Logic-Based Product Life-Cycle Management (LBPLM) System for Shipbuilding Industry—Conceptual Development

Product life-cycle management (PLM) has become something like "a magic wand" for various industries because of its capability to integrate different product modules via online network through the product's complete life cycle and hence to provide one-window access, thereby making the whole processes of product conception, design, manufacturing, delivery, maintenance, and disposal integrated with a reduction in product development time and cost. However, heavy industries (i.e., shipbuilding and shipbreaking) are different from consumer product industries because of high customization in design process and engineering software, widely varying scales of operations, and less compatibility between different design and production processes, for example, ship production is planned in activity-driven network scheduling system, in general, and is assumed to be more of a construction process or assembly process rather than a production process. In this paper, we present the conceptual development and the basic building concepts for a logic-based PLM system for the shipbuilding industry. Our logic bases consist of modularization, standardization, geographical zoning, and functional zoning. The logic bases of modularization and standardization are used in the ship design and production processes, and the logic bases of geographical zoning and functional zoning are used in "logically grouping" the on-board activities in the ship production process. Overall, this paper introduces a logic-driven methodology for PLM: planning and integration of ship design and production processes. Finally, in our implementation we show that by developing a logic-based PLM system the ship design and production processes become more streamlined and better planned and executed.