A preliminary study of fixtureless shipbuilding practice

Abstract

Fixtureless Fabrication Method (FFM) is a cognitive method containing knowledge in fabrication of ship hull without using any jig or support during fabrication. The purpose of this method is to avoid any wastage of materials during construction process. Fixture is a jig or support materials that used to stable the structure during construction. Normally, jig or support had been used will be scrapped at the end of the project or after ship already launching. It will be a wastage material as the jig or support just used once during shipbuilding process. This phenomenon occurs due the ships were built as customised product, normally 1 ship per construction. There are two way of using FFM technique in the construction of AHTB, which in upside down construction method and inverted condition that will be started from the main deck of the ship. The FFM for AHTB is a new method to replace the modular construction in order to eliminate utilization of the fixture and reduce fabrication cost. This study describes the preliminary study of fixtureless fabrication process for shipbuilding industry. The construction process of Anchor Handling Tug Boat (AHTB) will be analyzed and evaluated as main subject matter for this study.