Article
Research and Implementation of Lean Production Mode
in Shipbuilding
Tingxin Song * and Jincheng Zhou
Citation: Song, T.; Zhou, J. Research
and Implementation of Lean
Production Mode in Shipbuilding.
Processes 2021, 9, 2071. https://
doi.org/10.3390/pr9112071
Academic Editors: Arkadiusz Gola,
Izabela Nielsen and Patrik Grznár
Received: 9 October 2021
Accepted: 15 November 2021
Published: 18 November 2021
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4.0/).
School of Mechanical Engineering, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China;
102010158@hbut.edu.cn
* Correspondence: stx@hbut.edu.cn
Abstract:
This paper studies the production process of a shipbuilding enterprise. The company
suffers from long manufacturing cycle, low utilization rate of personnel and an unbalanced produc-
tion line. To solve these problems, the lean shipbuilding mode, mainly divided into shipbuilding
work breakdown, production plan and virtual flow operation in this paper, is put forward, which
combines the lean production and modern information management technology with shipbuilding.
Supported by the theory of work breakdown structure and task package scheduling, the shipbuilding
task package is reasonably divided. The priority of task package manufacturing is determined
by calculating the task package manufacturing sequence coefficient, and a reasonable number of
operators is calculated to ensure the continuity of segmented manufacturing. After determining the
manufacturing priority of the task pack and the number of allocable personnel, the corresponding
work can be scheduled. Production planning drives all production activities of the shipbuilding
enterprise, and just-in-time production is achieved through the reasonable arrangement of these
production plans, thus reducing the waste of personnel and time. Then, the virtual flow operation
is carried out, which can achieve high efficiency of flow production and high flexibility of fixed
workstation production during the production process of large-scale and heavy-duty products. The
virtual assembly production system of the workshop is established according to the characteristics
of shipbuilding operation and the actual production situation. On this basis, a lean shipbuilding
manufacturing execution system for small and medium-sized shipbuilding enterprises is developed
to achieve lean production in a shipbuilding workshop. Through the implementation of the lean
shipbuilding mode based on task package scheduling and its manufacturing execution system, com-
pared with the original data, the ship production cycle is reduced to 76.7%, the number of workers is
reduced by 16.7% and the production balance rate is up to 81%.
Keywords:
lean shipbuilding; work breakdown structure; task package scheduling; manufacturing
execution system
1. Introduction
The ship manufacturing industry is one of the biggest and the most important indus-
tries in the national economy [
1
]. If shipbuilding enterprises want to survive and improve
their competitiveness, they must improve shipbuilding efficiency, reduce labor costs and
shorten the production cycle [
2
]. Lean production is a type of management philosophy
developed by Toyota Motors. One of the lean thinking goals is to eliminate waste, which
can increase work satisfaction and turn waste into value. It should be emphasized that
lean thinking must go beyond the company. In other words, lean thinking has to be em-
ployed from the product design to the set of activities delivered to the end customer. Lean
manufacturing technology focuses on eliminating all types of waste in the manufacturing
process and reducing the lead time [
3
]. Many tools have been used to achieve lean manu-
facturing, such as Just-in-time (JIT), Kanban management, production line balance design,
cellular manufacturing, total productive maintenance (TPM) and 5S [
4
]. Lean remarkable
Processes 2021, 9, 2071. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr9112071 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/processes
