seatec - Finnish marine technology review 1/2005 | Page 49

InterSHIP improves the competitive advantage of the European shipbuilding industry “2005 will be the most important year for the European shipbuilding industry project InterSHIP, which has been underway for a year now.We have set ambitious goals and our hard work will be soon be paying off and showing results,” says managing director Kari Airaksinen from the InterSHIP project. InterSHIP represents improvements to the technical and economical aspects of the shipbuilding industry. We concentrate on creating ever-better working conditions by improving the pre-requisites of work, creating new working methods and improving modularity,” says and adds, ”The project aims at radically increasing the competitive advantage of European builders of cruise vessels, passenger ferries and RoPax vessels and developing more secure, efficient and environment-friendly ships.The project tackles the whole life cycle of ships and the goal is to gain significant reductions in building and development costs.The project also wants to introduce innovative solutions to the markets more speedily.” InterSHIP wants to strengthen the competitive advantage of shipbuilders in EU countries by improving and integrating tools and methods used in designing and implementing very challenging, unique vessels.The goal is to develop new production technology based on robotics and new IT applications, such as mobile information technology and knowledge and quality management. The programme allows shipyards to utilise the latest information on technology, environmental issues, secur ity, user friendliness and cost effectiveness in networked simultaneous design.This ensures the best solutions for the whole life cycle of the vessel. InterSHIP also focuses on strengthen- ” SEATEC 2005 47