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44 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • SEPTEMBER 2014 MR 75TH ANNIVERSARY American VULKAN Corporation Ph: 863-324-2424 | info@vulkanusa.com | www.vulkan.com Your source for premium power transmission solutions for Marine, Indus- trial and Construction Equipment applications in North America (includ- ing Canada and Mexico), the Caribbean and now countries of Central America and parts of South America including the nations of Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Photo credit: LCS2 American Vulkan MR Jan14.indd 1 12/19/2013 9:55:54 AM stages of ship design and production, as noted above in Aveva’s embrace of lean manufacturing. • And getting customers to under- stand that it’s not just knowing what information to gather and where it’s located, but knowing why you are providing it that is really key. Over engineering, or too much information, can cloud an otherwise clear piece of in- struction, and lead to mistakes that will have to be reworked. The company is trying to move itself into more of a consultative relationship with its old customers and newer off shore clients. According to Larkins, SSI wants to look at the bigger picture a bit more, taking on issues like managing information fl ow while increasing its focus on providing services. Spend a little time perusing the com- pany’s various blogs written by SSI executives, including Larkins, and the shift to bigger picture thinking is clear. And they want their clients thinking too. In particular, Larkins likes to “lift the curtain” on SSI’s popular ShipCon- structor package, and explain the busi- ness and technical thinking behind and impact of, the changes, approaches and upgrades in the product line, or point to an issue driving those changes, and talk about how to address it. The company provides a lot of av- enues through which customers can seek support or provide feedback, and recently added one more: Client Coun- cils, which gather together user repre- sentatives from narrow industry sectors and regions, to advise the company on addressing their specifi c requirements. “Both technology and industry require- ments are evolving quickly so our cli- ents continually need to adapt,” said SSI CTO Denis Morais. The initial Client Council consisted of Vripack, Peters Shipyards, Royal Huis- man, Vera Navis, Marine Technologies Ltd., BMT Nigel Gee, Mustang Ma- rine, Skipskompetanse, and Pendennis. Some of the groups’ requests were fea- tured in the new release: the split plate command, a new fi llet cut type for stiff- ener end cuts, increased pipe and HVAC connection tolerance, and the ability to create MarineDrafting views in other types of drawings. That’s the kind of response that engenders loyalty. Ship Constructor seems to turn up everywhere, often at shipyards and ar- chitectural practices that have been with the product since its early days as CAD- Link in the late’80s. Joe Comer, prin- cipal of Ship Architects, Inc., claims to have bought the fi rst ShipConstruc- tor license from founder Rolf Oetter in 1988, moving his design process off a mainframe onto a PC. Comer still uses ShipConstructor today. According to the company, the majority of U.S. Na- val warships are now built with the SSI solutions. The U.S. Coast Guard also has taken notice, according to Morais, and is asking for ShipConstructor – compatible deliverables on bids for its OPC Program. SSI’s fl agship product, ShipConstructor serves the shipbuilding and offshore industry, and is an Auto- CAD-based 3D Product Modeling and Production Planning CAD/CAM suite running on Microsoft’s SQL Server. When announcing his appointment as CEO, Larkins stressed the company’s commitment to delivering tools that are user friendly, scalable, easily adopted and implementable with minimal IT re- quirements. SSI combines support for “Our belief is get the guys in the ship- yard the right info, right materials and the right resources at the right time. To be successful (profi table) in ship building, you have to get it right the fi rst time in production. It’s what happens in the production phase that kills the ship yard.” Stephane Neuveglise, Product Busi- ness Manager at Aveva Group plc. Autodesk-based ShipConstructor ensures all departments are working on informa- tion from the same centralized database. “Doing more in the same space of time is actually an advance.” Darrell Larkins, CEO, SSI (Image: SSI) MR #9 (40-49).indd 44 9/4/2014 10:52:55 AM
