Samsung Heavy Industries, Industry's First to Fully Implement '3D Digital Production Drawings'

"Enterprise-wide Smart Integrated Infrastructure Construction"

Samsung Heavy Industries announced on the 30th that starting next month, it will fully implement '3D digital production drawings' for all shipbuilding operations. This will eliminate the need for production drawings and inspection documents throughout the ship design and manufacturing process, making it the first shipyard in the shipbuilding industry to transition to a 'paperless shipyard.'

Paper drawings often caused cost losses and process delays due to frequent design changes, damage to drawings, or misreading by workers. Samsung Heavy Industries explained that by utilizing digital production drawings, it is possible to ▲ intuitively verify the ship block structure and functions ▲ enable real-time communication between design and production ▲ provide accurate information to improve production efficiency and prevent quality degradation.

A Samsung Heavy Industries field worker is using a tablet PC containing 3D digital production drawings.
[Photo by Samsung Heavy Industries]

Samsung Heavy Industries expects that applying digital production drawings will reduce 600,000 sheets of paper production drawings annually and cut 45% of the design man-hours for LNG carriers based on outfitting installation standards. To establish a digital and mobile work environment, it plans to provide 3,000 tablet PCs by 2025 and continuously improve performance to make it easy for workers to use.

Since 2019, Samsung Heavy Industries has been promoting digital transformation across production, design, and administrative areas. It plans to accelerate the transition to an intelligent and autonomous shipyard by utilizing new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and digital twins.

Lee Wang-geun, Vice President and Shipyard Director of Samsung Heavy Industries, said, "The full application of 3D digital production drawings is an important milestone in the digital transformation of the shipbuilding industry," adding, "We will continue to expand the application of digital new technologies and build a company-wide smart integrated management infrastructure."