Concept design is the most important ship design stage where engineering science, practical knowledge, production methods and economic aspects need to be brought together. Decisions made during this design phase are strategic and influence the ship life-cycle as regards performance and cost. Possibilities for influencing total life-time cost of a ship are very high during concept design and decrease during following design phases, process development and manufacturing.
The demand for innovation and benefits in ship development requires innovation in the design process achievable by consideration of some basic fundamentals:
- design is the primary driver of cost, quality and time;
- conceptual design which is accurate to within 5-15%, may cost between 1:1000 to 1:100 of the total ship cos and can influence over 70% of the total life-cycle cost of a ship;
- design improvements are marginal if they only address single components and properties and not the overall ship;
- multidisciplinary teams available at NASDIS pds are the key to drive the overall design process;
- customers have to participate in decision-making from the earliest design stages.
At concept design stage, the problem-solving approach of NASDIS pds consists of structuring the specific design problem, generating alternative solutions, evaluating and selecting the 'best possible' design among several candidate solutions, and communicating to the preliminary level by delivering top-level specifications.
