Solid steps, steady progress: elevating intermediate product integrity to the next level

Since the beginning of this year, Wuhu Shipyard has closely focused on the goal of ‘ensuring ship delivery, strengthening systems, and emphasizing collaboration.’ With lean production at its core, it has steadily advanced modular and block-based construction processes, striving to improve the integrity of intermediate products. This has effectively driven a steady rise in slipway utilization and production turnover efficiency, achieving comprehensive optimization in both construction quality and safety production, and fully ushering in a new pattern of development for the century-old shipyard.

On May 26, the superstructure unit of Wuhu Shipyard’s 18,500-ton IMO Type II chemical tanker (No. 18525) was delivered with high integrity and successfully transferred off-site. This marks the company’s first realization of ‘prefabrication’ of a superstructure unit with high integrity. Prior to this, the ship had already completed the integrated construction of the engine room bottom module and piping units. Meanwhile, leveraging the series-building mode on the inclined berth, the shipyard has achieved orderly parallel construction of multiple vessels and efficient production rhythm flow, deeply practicing the construction philosophy of ‘exchanging space for time.

Construction philosophy evolution drives fundamental production model reinvention

The company has established the core guiding principle of ‘continuously improving the integrity of intermediate products’ and is fully implementing refined production planning featuring ‘perfect block, perfect grand block, and perfect semi-ship.’ It transforms long-lead processes into short-cycle ones and underwater work into above-water work. Taking the 18,500-ton series chemical tankers as a benchmark, the company continues to raise the integrity standards of ships upon launching, achieving modular construction of engine room, cargo hold, superstructure and other units, and steadily advancing toward the goal of ‘commissioning upon launching.

Process innovation: boosting quality and efficiency of the build system

The company insists on benchmarking, iterative improvement, and continuous refinement, exploring construction paths that suit its own characteristics. It actively promotes new methods such as series building on inclined berths and modular construction, steadily improving the modern shipbuilding production main process. At the same time, it uses process flow improvements to drive the upgrade of design concepts, establishing the principle of ‘design for production,’ and promoting the innovation of construction modes such as modular construction, block-based construction, and zero-docking launching.

From the continuous upgrading of its production and construction philosophy to the steady progress toward the goal of ‘commissioning upon launching,’ Wuhu Shipyard remains committed to unlocking production potential through process innovation and consolidating its competitive advantages through model upgrades. It is steadfastly forging a high-quality shipbuilding path that aligns with its own distinctive characteristics.

This is a living practice of building inner strength and gaining momentum for a big leap forward.