By Geoff Fein

South Korean shipyards are achieving significant production rates, upward of a ship per week, and there are no signs the facilities are planning to slow down, according to Navy Secretary Donald Winter, who recently returned visiting them.

During his visit, Winter said he was fascinated with the work going on at the Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (HHI)shipyard at Busan and the Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. Ltd. (DSME) shipyard at Koje Island.

“First of all, in terms of just simply production rates, you’ve got to look at the these yards and recognize they are defining the industry to a very great extent,” he told Defense Daily in a recent interview.

Both HHI and DSME have production rates of well over a ship a week, Winter noted.

“You are talking about some very significant production rates and discussions of exceeding two ships a week,” he added.

And it just isn’t the production rates that caught Winter’s attention. The yards are churning out ships in excess of 100,000 tons, he added.

The two Korean yards were also employing a lot of technology into the ships, Winter noted. “[There is a] tremendous emphasis on fuel efficiency, even to the point of using single screw designs up over 100,000 tons, [and] offsetting that with other mechanisms…bow thrusters and the like.”

Winter also pointed out that the ships being built were not bulk cargo ships, but complex vessels–container ships with tremendous capacities, sophisticated oil processing ships, offshore oil industry drilling platforms, cryogenic storage for liquefied natural gas (LNG) purposes.

Top executives from both HHI and DSME commented to Winter that they were targeting their business for those areas where they think they can be competitive, notwithstanding some of the labor cost advantages the Chinese yards have. “Although they do expect the Chinese to start having more labor costs as time goes on,” Winter noted.

Although Winter has tried to visit shipyards wherever he has traveled abroad, his motivation for wanting to see the Korean shipyards came after a trip he made to the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC). It was during this trip he got to see one of the Korean destroyers, “which, quite frankly, looked very good.”

One of the things that stood out, during his tour of the shipyards, was the emphasis on quality control at the early production phases.

“It’s really remarkable to see modules being put together. It wasn’t just the outfitting levels which were good,” Winter said.

The yard executives talk about 80 percent outfitting of the modules being a general standard, he added. “That’s not exceptional…not unusual…that’s the way people are going both in Europe and even in a few yards in the U.S.”

But, Winter added, when a person looks at modules being put together in the Korean yards, they fit just about perfectly.

“You got the modules, and all the edges are just nicely fitting up. All they have to do is weld them together. They have automatic welding capabilities and things of that nature,” he noted.

“One of the fundamentals of modern process engineering is that the earlier you can design in engineering produce quality, the more leverage it has later on,” Winter said. “You don’t find that much use of grinders, and trying to even out lines and trying to get things to work together, the way you might in many U.S. or even European yards. I think all of that is kind of remarkable.”

One other thing that struck Winter was that the Korean shipyards tend to build multiple ships in huge dry-docks simultaneously. “As many as four ships; actually two complete ships and two half ships that they later swap around.”

“The interesting thing that really got me was you can’t really float a ship out unless all the ships are done. You do them all at once, you just don’t do one at a time,” he said. “They have such good process control over their ships that this was not a problem for them. The schedule control, the dependability on a schedule, was at level I have never seen anywhere else.”

Maybe even more impressive Winter noted, is that the two shipyards are relatively new.

“Both yards were built out of whole cloth in the early 70s. There was nothing there,” he said. “[These are not] 200 to 300-year-old shipyards. It isn’t like going to Portsmouth, England, which has been around.”

HHI broke ground on its shipyard in April 1972 and began building two 260,000 tons of deadweight (DWT) very large crude carriers (VLCC) along with its dry dock. In 1974, HHI had a simultaneous christening ceremony for its first two VLCCs and the dedication of its shipyard, according to the company’s website.

DSME broke ground on its shipyard in 1973. In 1979, the yard built its first chemical carrier and, in 1993, DSME built Korea’s first submarine.

Winter also noted that both shipyards are doing all technology development in the yards.

“I have seen technology elsewhere that they don’t yet have, so it’s not that they have the absolute best everywhere,” he added.

But they are both modern facilities, no question about it, Winter said.

Both HHI and DSME did use a lot of European shipbuilding experience in addition to the production technologies that are evident, he said. “These are both two huge companies that have just incredible technology breadth and depth.”

As he toured the two yards, Winter noted that every place he looked the two companies are putting up new fabrication buildings. “They are talking about significantly increasing the number of ships that they are building. There is also evidence of increasing technology investment in the ships themselves.”

And some of those ships are in excess of 300,000 tons, he added. “That’s the classes they are building up to.”

These are not agile ships, Winter continued. While they are not going to do a crashback stop very well, they are not just big open bulk carriers either.

“They are complex ships designed with a huge premium for fuel efficiency. [The executives] talked about some of the diesels they had on board. [They are] very, very conscience of the fuel consumption rates that are being employed…conscience of crew sizing issues,” Winter said. “I went on board the new destroyer they are building…it’s beautifully put together…again, very meticulous workmanship. It gives you a sense it has been put together with some meticulous degree of care.”

The 8,000-ton destroyer is not up to the combat capability of the DDGs, Winter added.

“It doesn’t have the radar we have, the ASW suite we have,” he said. “[Still] it’s a very capable ship…again beautifully put together.”

Although Winter was taken by the Korean destroyer, he noted that naval shipbuilding is a small part of the yards’ business. “I would say less than 10 percent, maybe less than five. Less than that if you did it on a tonnage basis.”