The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency today
announced the award of $34.5 million for four advanced technology
development MARITECH projects to improve ship design and
construction processes.
These cooperative agreement efforts,
signed in June, are expected to dramatically reduce the time and
cost for designing and constructing U.S. Navy ships and help
thrust the U.S. shipbuilding industry ahead of its international
competition in commercial ship construction.
The Virtual Shipbuilding Consortium, with members Hughes
Aircraft Inc., Fullerton, Calif.; Orincon Corp., San Diego,
Calif.; American Management Enterprises, Arlington, Va.; Avondale
Shipyards Inc., New Orleans, La.; and Intergraph Corporation,
Huntsville, Ala., received a two-year $19,033,296 cost-shared
cooperative agreement on June 27, 1996.
Of the total agreement,
the government's share is $7,619,696; industry's share is
$11,413,600.
This effort will develop an electronic information
framework to allow physically separated companies to operate
efficiently and effectively as a virtual corporation and to
rapidly respond to customer inquiries for new ship designs.
The STEP (International Standard for Exchange of Product
Models)-Ship Product Model Exchange Project, proposed by
Intergraph Corp., Huntsville, Ala.; Newport News Shipyard,
Newport News, Va.; Electric Boat Corp., Groton, Conn.;
Computervision, Bedford, Mass.; Kockums Computer Systems,
Annapolis, Md.; Ingalls Shipyard, Pascagoula, Miss.; and
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., received a three-year
$16,165,170 cooperative agreement on June 28, 1996.
The
government and industry are evenly sharing the total cost. This
project will develop and test prototype STEP-compliant
translators to facilitate the transfer of ship three-dimensional
product model data between different companies with different
computer-aided design and manufacturing systems via a neutral
file format.
Electric Boat Corp., Groton, Conn.; the National Industrial
Information Infrastructure Protocols Consortium, Stamford, Conn.;
Avondale Shipyards Inc., New Orleans, La.; Atlantic Marine
Corporation, Jacksonville, Fla.; Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine;
Todd Pacific Shipyards,
Seattle, Wash.; Computer Sciences Corporation, El Segundo,
Calif.; Deneb Robotics, Auburn Hills, Mich.; Carl L. Harshman
and Associates Inc., St. Louis, Mo.; National Steel and
Shipbuilding Corporation, San Diego, Calif.; and Structured
Technology Corporation, Niantic, Conn., received a three-year
$21,809,206 cooperative agreement for the New Shipbuilding
Methodology Through the Shipbuilding Information Infrastructure
Project (SHIIP) on June 27, 1996.
Of this total, the
government's share is $10,085,546; industry's share is
$11,723,660.
This effort will develop an advanced, electronic
shipyard information infrastructure, modify shipyard processes
and address the required cultural changes within a shipyard to
radically improve the construction process.
The Commercial Object Model of Products/Processes for an
Advanced Shipbuilding System (COMPASS) project, proposed by
Intergraph Corp., Huntsville, Ala.; Newport News Shipyard,
Newport News, Va.; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.; and
the American Bureau of Shipping, Houston, Texas, received a three-
year $17,831,481 cooperative agreement on June 26, 1996.
Of this
total, the government's share is $8,716,532; industry's share is
$9,114,481.
COMPASS seeks to develop a comprehensive,
affordable, Windows-based, ship design and data management system
that will be scaleable for use by shipyards of all sizes.
The MARITECH program is a five-year effort to work with
industry to develop and apply advanced technology to improve the
commercial competitiveness of the U.S. shipbuilding industry and
reduce the cost of Naval shipbuilding.
The awards announced today develop the information and
communication infrastructure that U.S. shipyards will need to be
commercially competitive into the next century and that the Navy
and industry will need to design and build affordable Navy ships.
The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Va., and the Naval
Surface Warfare Center-Carderock Division (David Taylor),
Carderock, Md., are acting as DARPAs agents for these efforts.
More detail on each project is provided below:
The Virtual Shipbuilding Consortium will develop
technologies that will enable the different participants involved
in ship design and construction (i.e., shipbuilders, designers,
suppliers, etc.) to respond more rapidly to customer inquiries
for new ships.
An information framework will be developed so
multiple companies can operate efficiently and effectively as a
virtual organization through the use of advanced communications
and information technologies.
It will also include the
development and use of advanced computer visualization and
process simulation tools.
The STEP-Ship Product Model Exchange Project will establish
a neutral ship product model data base in accordance with the
International Standards Organization (ISO) STEP Application
Protocols.
Prototype translators will than be developed by the
participating computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM)
software vendors to transfer data from individual shipyard
CAD/CAM systems into and out of the neutral data base.
If
successful, a shipyard will be able to transfer its ship product
model data into the neutral data base format and
another shipyard will be able to retrieve this data into its
CAD/CAM system.
This project is a critical link in the ability
for shipyards and their customers, Navy and commercial, to be
able to share ship three-dimensional product model data
regardless of what CAD/CAM system is being used.
The New Shipbuilding Methodology Through the Shipbuilding
Infrastructure Project (SHIIP) will develop technologies that
allow a shipbuilder to reduce the time and cost of ship
construction through a new shipbuilding methodology that
leverages off new, innovative information (intra-net) systems.
In this project, Electric Boat will develop and deploy
technologies that will provide enterprise-wide information
libraries on ship design details and construction strategies and
provide electronic access to these libraries throughout the
workforce.
The project will address the organizational
reengineering and cultural changes that must take place to truly
take advantage of this technology.
There will also be an attempt
to deploy this technology in a second tier commercial shipyard to
demonstrate its applicability to commercial ship construction.
The Commercial Object Model of Products/Processes for an
Advanced Shipbuilding System Project (COMPASS) will develop a
comprehensive, next-generation, affordable, Windows-based ship
design and data management system that integrates and manages all
the data required for ship design, construction and lifecycle
support.
This project will integrate Newport News' self-
developed, workstation-based product modeling system (wsVIVID)
with Intergraph's Jupiter component object software technology.
Jupiter provides a standard means for integrating geometric and
non-geometric data in a Windows environment so that it can run on
a low-cost computer platform.
Ship designers and builders will
be able to plug and play their technical applications with
office automation components in the familiar Windows environment.
