SHIP PRODUCIBILITY LESSONS LEARNED INTELLIGENT DATABASE

Improving ship producibility is the key method for reducing U.S. Navy ship construction cost without compromise to mission capability. Producibility in ship design is impeded by differing mind-sets about ship design and construction between the Navy and shipyards. Knowledge of potential producibility problems during early ship design would allow changes to be made early, significantly reducing costs. A ship producibility lessons learned intelligent database (L(to the 2nd power)DB) of design and construction knowledge could improve the naval ship design process. This project will develop a user-friendly, interactive, and intelligent database for documenting and tracking design producibility lessons learned. The ultimate objective is to incorporate the L(to the 2nd power)DB with the ship design database currently under development by the Navy. This integration will provide ship designers with on-line access to both design information and design decision ramifications. During Phase I of this effort, the database element relationships for the L(to the 2nd power)DB will be defined, proof-of-concept database and user-interface prototypes will be built, and an intelligent user-interface component will be investigated. Database element relationships will be defined using Nijssen\'s Information Analysis Method (NIAM) techniques and the database prototype will utilize the NAVSEA CAD 2 System relational database software.