Thesis Report Jonathan Huls Page xi
Summary
Background and research question
To finalize the master of Transport, Infrastructure and Logistics, a 30 ECTS research project was done by exploring a complex problem in this field. This document re-ports on the research executed by Jonathan Huls with the aim to “Make recommen-dations to improve the yard start-up process at Damen Shipyards”. The research in-cludes observations and an analysis of the yard startup process of one of the most recent and largest yard development projects in which Damen is involved in Qatar. It included an internship on the yard location to be able to observe the actual rapid de-velopment of the shipyard NDSQ.
The research has tried to answer the question:
“What can be learned from NDSQ’s yard start-up to improve the next new Damen yard start-up?”
Observed problems
To answer this question the main problems during the startup of NDSQ where identified using a systems thinking approach. The shipyard was viewed as a system which has certain functions like the production of completed vessels according to requirements with a prescribed process.
The following four problems were found to be most important:
The unclear intended business model, starting point and end result of Damen related to the development of a shipyard. If this information lacks it cannot be used to design and control the yard development process and its intermediate deliverables.
The lack of a formal method to control the yard development process in cooperation with external and internal stakeholders. This yard start-up process consisted of a cha-otic problem solving process with un-transparent goals and performance measures. This has given room for political behavior of stakeholders and blurred accountability for the quality of the final system.
The absence of a detailed shared model of the shipbuilding process to show the new production organization how it is supposed to function.
The lack of a large amount of information that the project team needed to make consistent policy and informed decisions during the design and set-up of the new production organization.
Considering the expressed ambition to double turnover it seems the Damen company currently prioritizes growth over organizational learning and improvement. The focus on opportunistic growth goes at the cost of organizational improvement and can cre-ate risks for the executing social systems during new projects based on poor funda-mental methods.
Thesis Report Jonathan Huls Page xii Solutions proposed to reduce the problems.
The use of clear fundamental work methods can help to minimize the identified risks and improve the results. To work on solutions and avoid these problems in a next yard start-up process it is advised to the Damen company to:
Structure the yard development process towards the desired yard system design and base this on a consistent company vision on the functions of the new yard.
Control the yard development process regarded as an innovation-process and form durable sets of agreements between parties that are accountable for quality of the re-sult.
Model the shipbuilding process including flows of information and material as the central process in the yard system model.
Recognize the specified fundamental internal company problems that complicate the start-up of new yards and provide a yard policy as recommended on a number of sub-jects.
Conclusions and recommendations.
The report includes observations of important aspects and phases of the development process of the NDSQ shipyard as a system. To conclude it was advised to further develop and implement a cohesive start-up approach for new yards. The observations have been used to create the basic framework of such a proposed approach that exists of the solutions and a possible method to implement this. The implementation can have significant advantages such as improved risk- and cost management and im-provement of experienced stress levels of employees during a yard-startup. Consider-ing the potential benefits it seems such an approach may create overall return on in-vestment Further research on the implementation of promising parts of this approach is therefore recommended. In the appendix several reference models and tables are added that give overview by reducing complexity which may provide a basis to con-tinue the research. In addition this serves as gathering of key variables and documents that have played a role during the development of NDSQ. This makes the report a possible source of information for a project team that wants to design and prepare a new yard start-up for the Damen Shipyard Group.
