By Geoff Fein
General Dynamics‘ [GD] Bath Iron Work (BIW) ultra hall may be one of the most significant capital reinvestments in the nation’s shipbuilding industry in the last few years, according to a top Navy official.
“It reflects a lot of the lessons learned in terms of what’s been done elsewhere and what’s been learned in the U.S. about modular construction and how to really be able to both build ships and in that process how do you make it easier for the people actually doing it,” Navy Secretary Donald Winter told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
Winter went up to BIW earlier this summer. It was the first time he had visited the yard since becoming Navy Secretary just over two years ago.
‘[It was a] good chance to go back and see what’s transpired since I’ve been there. Quite frankly, it was very helpful in that regard to see some of the changes,” Winter said. “The main reason I wanted to go up was to see the ultra hall.”
The ultra hall has a couple of basic features, Winter noted. It is a large hall and enables workers at BIW to build up and outfit modules in a controlled environment. That controlled environment has a lot of benefits, he added.
“Not only just the normal issues associated with workforce efficiency throughout different weather conditions and the like, but also just in terms of your ability to do things like certain coatings and things of that nature, whose longevity and utility will depended upon the environment that exists at the time the coatings [are] applied,” Winter explained. “[There are] a lot of advantages to that.”
Besides providing access to services such as air and power at different locations throughout the ultra hull, BIW workers can get tools, expendables, and consumables without having to climb all the way down and all the way back up, Winter said.
“It’s many of the things the lean process engineering has instilled in many facilities for many production approaches, whether it has to do with aircraft or cars,” he said. “Shipbuilding has its own issues–up and down, in and out, big items, things of that nature–and I think there is some good application here.”
Winter added that as BIW workers are just beginning to get acquainted with the ultra hall, “they are learning things. It’s a major piece of the production process, but it’s not the totality, and my sense is as they get more and more experienced in the use of the facility they will understand more how they have to get the rest of it to work together.”
BIW officials were also talking about some of the changes they want to make in the pre-outfitting stages before they get into the ultra hall, to reflect what they could and could not do in that facility, Winter added. “That’s all part of what you have to do.”
He added that the efforts he saw were encouraging.
“I think it is a good step. [I am] pleased to see it…the idea of continuous process improvement. I am not using that as an old bumper sticker. Process improvement is really a continuing effort. [It] has to be a continuing effort,” Winter said.
“No one ever goes ahead and gets it right the first time you layout a process and try to optimize it. You learn from using that process,” he added. “It also gets into the idea that I have been trying to push on hard, which is that we need investment not only in the facilities aspects but in the processes and people,” he added.
If a company makes all of those investments together, they can usually affect a lot more of a change than they can if they just try to pick one and force it through, Winter said.
Although Winter said he did not get a chance to tour the entire BIW facility, what he did see represented a good move forward.
“I could see some of the intellectual history of it both in terms of what they have been doing internally as well as some of the things other companies have done around the world. And I think that is all good,” he said.
Winter has been advocating for the yards to reinvest, but he isn’t interested in taking any credit for the efforts BIW, or any yard for that matter, have taken.
“I think they understand the interest, they understand the leverage. I can clearly see some of the changes…that is heartening,” he said. “How much of that is due to my bully pulpit, and how much of that is what would have happened without it, I don’t know…I don’t really care. I am trying to make some things happen.”
He also said it’s a lot easier to see the investment and thought process in New England as opposed to the Gulf Coast, because in the Gulf Coast there are both recovery efforts and reinvestment efforts ongoing.
Back in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast leaving a swath of destruction that ran from New Orleans east across the Mississippi coast and into Alabama, damaging a number of shipyards, including Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] Gulf Coast shipbuilding operations, which suffered $850 million in damages from Katrina. In January, the company reported the post-Katrina fallout, that at times hindered Northrop Grumman’s past earnings, is settling down (Defense Daily, Jan. 25).
In the end, Winter said, the Navy needs to understand the impact on the cost, schedule and quality of the ships to see how well these investments made by BIW are working.
“We think that our ships and the fleet are the envy of the world. There are technologies and efficiencies in the production of ships that are in general evidence in other facilities outside the U.S. before they show up here,” he said. “This is one of those areas where learning from others can be very important.”