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Shipbuilding & Maritime Industry
Project Planning and Production Planning for Shipbuilding & Maritime Industry
The shipyard and maritime industry faces significant organizational challenges due to highly complex production and project planning processes, as well as demanding supply chains. Efficient planning processes are essential to meeting these requirements.
Mastering Complexity with Integrated Planning Approaches
The maritime industry — from commercial shipyards to naval shipbuilding to maritime suppliers — faces unique challenges: full order books, extremely long project timelines, a deep value chain (engineer-to-order), and thousands of interdependent network planning activities. Every ship is a highly individualized large-scale project, with design, procurement, and manufacturing running in parallel. Managing these disciplines effectively requires a planning layer that breaks down data silos.
Traditional planning systems quickly reach their limits here. waySuite bridges the gap from strategic project management to operational detailed scheduling on the shop floor. By connecting both worlds, you stay in control of schedules, capacities, and costs — from keel-laying to handover.
The Central Challenges in Modern Shipbuilding
Building commercial, naval, or specialized vessels — as well as manufacturing complex maritime components — leaves no room for planning errors. Shipyards and suppliers in the DACH region face structural challenges every day:
Long-Term, Dynamic Large-Scale Projects (Engineer-to-Order)
Building specialized vessels, naval units, or offshore platforms spans months or years. A planning change in one area has major ripple effects on downstream trades. Without an integrated software environment, these dependencies inevitably lead to schedule delays.
Volatile Resource and Capacity Planning
Shipyards must simultaneously schedule their own skilled workers, specialized subcontractors, docks, and heavy equipment (such as crane systems). Bottlenecks in critical resources immediately stall overall construction progress.
Highly Cascading Supply Chains
Thousands of supplier parts must arrive at the shipyard exactly on schedule. Delays from system suppliers (such as propulsion technology or interior fit-out) throw off the rhythm of section assembly if the APS system doesn’t counteract immediately.
Pure One-Off Production (Engineer-to-Order)
Every project is a prototype. Standardized master data is often incomplete at the outset. Planning must respond flexibly to design changes introduced even while production is already underway.
Digital Fragmentation and Disconnected Systems
There’s often a strict separation between the ERP system, CAD/PLM data, and site managers’ separate Excel lists. These IT silos prevent a transparent overall view and delay well-informed decisions.
The Challenges of Production Planners – IT/SCM Leaders – Executives
Here's how waySuite supports production planners with their daily challenges:
Manually linking project milestones and shop orders costs time.
Example Challenges Faced by Production Planners
- A unified, up-to-date view of projects, manufacturing orders, and material flows.
- Early detection of schedule risks and bottlenecks.
- Simulation capabilities to test alternatives before making a decision.
- Reduced manual coordination effort between departments.
Here's how waySuite supports production and SCM leadership with these challenges:
End-to-end visibility into the utilization of critical resources (docks, workshops, personnel).
Example Challenges Faced by IT/SCM and Site Leaders
- End-to-end visibility into the utilization of critical resources (docks, workshops, personnel).
- Better coordination of suppliers and internal pre-fabrication areas.
- A unified metrics base for operational and tactical decisions across the supply chain.
- A foundation for sustainably improving on-time delivery and throughput.
Here's how waySuite supports executive leadership:
Greater planning certainty for major investment projects.
Example Challenges Faced by Executives
- Greater planning certainty for major investment projects.
- Better control over capacity and cash flow through transparent project and production plans.
- A stronger competitive position through reliable delivery dates and professional customer communication.
- A future-ready, digitally supported planning organization as a foundation for further growth.
Technological Excellence: How waySuite Synchronizes Maritime Processes
waySuite is built on an integrated planning approach that functions as a single source of truth. It centrally consolidates data from ERP systems, PM systems, and other databases, calculating planning alternatives in real time.
Integrated Project and Production Planning in Everyday Shipyard Operations
Instead of rigid, sequential planning, waySuite enables dynamic detailed scheduling (APS). For example, if the delivery date of a main engine changes or a design milestone shifts, waySuite instantly calculates the impact on all downstream section construction and proactively suggests new assembly sequences and work plans to keep the ship’s completion date on track.
Validated Scenario Planning Without Risk
waySuite’s in-memory technology lets planners run complex simulations in a protected simulation environment:
- “What happens if delivery of the propulsion system is delayed by four weeks?”
- “Can we accept an additional repair order in Dock 2 without jeopardizing the newbuild in Dock 1?”
The software delivers answers in seconds, making the consequences visible across all resources.
Real-Time Scheduling and Capacity Checks: Every update from production or suppliers flows directly into the system. You immediately see whether the plan remains stable or where bottlenecks are emerging.
Secure Your Maritime Planning Processes Now
Maximize your on-time delivery and stay in full control of resources and schedules, even in complex ETO shipbuilding projects. Let’s work together to explore how waySuite can optimally complement your existing system landscape.
The Solution: waySuite for the Maritime Industry
valantic waySuite offers the perfect combination of project management and production planning to meet the complex demands of the shipyard industry.
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1
Project Management
- Support for planning and managing large-scale projects with thousands of network planning activities
- Seamlessly integrable with ERP systems, enabling centralized planning across all project phases
- Scenario simulations for evaluating risks, schedules, and resources
- Transparent multi-project planning for parallel construction projects, with prioritization and conflict resolution
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2
Real-Time Production Planning and Control
- Real-time data for fast, well-informed decisions
- Optimization of capacities, resources, and supply chains through continuous synchronization
- Simulation of production scenarios, e.g., for machine breakdowns, delivery delays, or resource bottlenecks
- Support for strategic make-or-buy decisions through comparison of cost and schedule scenarios
Benefits of waySuite in the Shipyard Industry
waySuite offers an integrated planning approach that synchronizes project management and production planning. All decision-making levels within the company benefit:
- Continuous synchronization of all planning processes based on up-to-date information
- Real-time visualization of project data and production processes
- End-to-end planning from the proposal phase through completion
- Seamless integration with ERP, MES, and other systems
- Optimized capacity utilization and avoidance of bottlenecks
- Effective planning of specialized materials and components
- Well-informed make-or-buy decisions through simulation of different scenarios
- Proactive identification and resolution of issues through scenario analysis
- Improved on-time delivery through continuous optimization of the critical path
- Reduced downtime and an enhanced value chain
"valantic waySuite gives us, for the first time, a complete overview of our maritime order book — with all resources, capacities, and schedules in one integrated project plan. Especially valuable: we can simulate schedule changes and immediately see how they affect critical paths and buffers — from engineering and design all the way to production and commissioning.
Christoph Nolting
Head of Integrated Planning & Tools, MEYER WERFT
Our Customer Projects in the Maritime Industry
Have Questions? Feel Free to Reach Out!
FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions About APS Planning in the Shipyard Industry
APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) software helps companies plan complex project and production processes while accounting for capacity, material availability, and schedules. This is especially important for shipyards and maritime suppliers, since projects run over long timelines, are highly interconnected, and require coordinating many resources and suppliers. waySuite brings all this information into a shared planning environment, enabling realistic, reliable plans.
waySuite maps out project structures, milestones, and dependencies in detail. Project and production data are linked, so project managers and planning managers can see at any time how changes in the project affect production and material supply — and vice versa. This simplifies scheduling, prioritization, and customer communication.
Yes. waySuite’s strength lies precisely in its integrated view of projects and manufacturing orders. Engineering tasks, production steps, and procurement processes are planned and managed within a single system. This is especially valuable for ETO projects such as newbuild vessels or complex maritime installations.
waySuite features standardized interfaces to common ERP systems (e.g., SAP) and can incorporate data from MES and other systems. This supplies the planning environment with up-to-date master and transactional data, without requiring existing systems to be replaced. The specific integration architecture is defined jointly with IT and business departments as part of implementation projects.
The project planning module visualizes complex dependencies clearly, for example through interactive Gantt charts. This clear display and intuitive usability make the enormous project complexity of engineer-to-order (ETO) projects manageable.
waySuite meets the highest technological standards. Sensitive design, project, and planning data is processed securely, in accordance with strict, industry-specific data security guidelines.