Development exchanges vital for shipyards
Besides relying on science and education for shipbuilding, yards should strengthen communications and information exchanges to enable them to conduct research and develop their business effectively, an industry executive says.
Hudong Shipbuilding Group executive Zhou Zhenbo said his shipyard, backed by a solid technical team, had met different requirements while building new vessels.
'Such findings have not only assured the successes of the development and turned the development into commodities, but also enable more achievements to be made in the future,' he told a recent conference.
To develop vessels with high and new technologies, Hudong was always guided by the market principle of giving priority to customers' requirements.
The group also attaches great importance to the indexes of technical properties.
Mr Zhou said nowadays, with the rapid growth of high and new technologies, only when the technical resources of the design and production departments complemented each other could more products be developed within a relatively short period.
Hudong had enjoyed the co-operation of the design units at home and abroad, resulting in benefits for both parties, he said.
For a shipbuilding enterprise, it was necessary to carry out lead research not only for ships but also for various kinds of process techniques to produce high-standard vessels, Mr Zhou said.
It was important to study the correlations between new ship technologies, vessel demands, development of new marine equipment and materials when talking of shipbuilding, Mr Zhou said.
More and more ships represented the development of marine technologies which would not materialise until the shipbuilder had found methods of development in a co-ordinated way through the study of correlations of these subjects, he added.
Mr Zhou said the group developed and constructed vessels for many leading shipping companies and produced hi-tech equipment for the vessels.
He said the group's 1990 refrigerated vessel of 2,700 20 foot equivalent units was honoured as 'a type [of vessel] for the future because of many scientific findings adopted on board and the high technical and economic index the ship features'.
