Affordable Parts Library Catalog System

The objective of this proposal is to build a practical, cost-effective and highly flexible parts library catalog system for commercial shipyards.The proposed catalog systems will complement typical medium to small shipyard IT infrastructures and will enable these shipyards to implement and benefit from improved e-commerce and supply chain concepts.Parts Library Catalog Systems are a means to provide parts information for shipyard design, procurement, and planning processes. Parts data are only entered once, then re-used many times in different areas of the shipyard's business. The catalog system canhelp to reduce the labor content and overall cycle time for all parts related business processes.This proposal will build on Atlantec's Topgallant suite of interoperability products and the architecture and data models developed in the NSRP ISE projects. It will focus on the requirements of small to medium sized shipyards, though.During Phase I of this project Atlantec Enterprise Solutions, Inc. plans to define parts catalog system requirements, to develop product specifications and to prototype an early implementation of the parts catalog system in cooperation with its partnersBender Shipbuilding & Repair Co., Inc.,Kvaerner Philadelphia Shipyard, Inc., Liberty Consulting, Knowledge Based Systems, Inc.. The proposed development will provide an affordable and practical parts catalog system for small to medium U.S. shipyards. This new parts catalog system will enable shipyards to implement and benefit from new e-commerce and supply chain concepts.It will support a seamless flow of information for the complete supply chain, and will streamline and simplify parts related business communication and processes.The parts catalog system can help to reduce the labor content and overall cycle time for parts related business processes. Parts data is entered once then re-used many times in different areas of the shipyard's business. The time required to define andselect supplier parts for a specific design can be significantly reduced. Also, the procurement process, i.e. the request for quotation, offer evaluation and the ordering will benefit from a common parts information base at a shipyard. Design changes andrework induced by inconsistent parts information can be eliminated. Also, part equivalency checking can be a big cost saver for the shipyards.