Integration alternatives for ship designers and shipyards

Abstract

The offshore oil industry in Norway has for decades required advanced special purpose equipment for its operations. Norwegian shipbuilders have supplied the offshore industry and specialized in producing customized and technologically advanced ships. Shipbuilding is a typical Engineer-to-Order (ETO) industry. While the ship concept and design continues to be developed in Norway, ship production is increasingly performed at foreign yards. This characteristic makes the industry an interesting case for studying integration between actors. This paper presents a typology of different integration alternatives for ship designers and shipyards. The three alternatives presented are ownership, partner yard and market yard. The paper also identifies and discusses industry-relevant business factors that are affected by the choice of integration level. © 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.