Minimization of Production Cost by use of an Automatic Cost Assessment Method and Simulation

This paper will present different ways to minimize cost in shipbuilding industry. Amongst them we have the production
simulation methods, the cost assessment methods and the optimization methods.
Nowadays, cost assessment is a key task of an integrated ship design. The various methods to estimate the production
cost differ with the known information (input data). The less information is detailed, the earlier a method can be used
in the design process. The more information is used, the better we can assess the differences between design
alternatives.
The methods presented here and the “design for production” concept promise to increase the productivity trough the
following points: a more accurate cost estimation, an improvement in the deadlines planning and the production
schedule, a progress in distribution of the workload between the various production workshops, a better knowledge of
the individual costs that will permit to reduce the global cost.
In order to illustrate our work, we present in this paper three methods to decrease the global cost of a ship.