THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 8, 1996 TAG: 9602080426
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
For Newport News Shipbuilding speed means money and jobs.
Building ships faster means building more ships. So it was with pride and great expectations that shipyard executives kicked off an effort Wednesday to build vessels in half the time.
``If we get more work, we employ more people,'' said William Fricks, the shipyard's chief executive. ``The work is out there to be brought in, if we can meet the schedule and cost requirements'' of commercial buyers.
``It's a pretty good objective and it's probably doable,'' said a shipbuilding analyst, who asked not to be identified. ``They're going to have to do something to be competitive in the commercial market.''
For the past 15 years, Newport News Shipbuilding has built only aircraft carriers and submarines for the Navy. Recently it landed a contract to build four petroleum product tankers for a Greek shipping company, the first commercial order for a U.S. yard from a foreign buyer since the 1950s.
The yard's effort to halve building time will be focused first on the production of these tankers.
The first tanker will take 15 months to build, Fricks said. A world-class shipyard can build product tankers in eight months.
``It takes eight years to build an aircraft carrier,'' Fricks said. ``We want to build a product tanker in seven months. That's going to take a real breakthrough.''
The shipyard aims to meet its seven-month building goal by the time it delivers its fifth or sixth vessel tanker, Fricks said.
The shipyard is waiting for the the U.S. Maritime Administration to approve federal loan guarantees for a project that would boost the yard's tanker backlog to nine.
``I'm hopeful to hear something in the next few days,'' Fricks said. ``The only thing holding up the deal is the bureaucratic process of finishing this up.''
Fricks kicked off the program to speed up shipbuilding with a ceremony attended by about 600 yard employees and held in the shipyard's cavernous Modular Outfitting Facility.
One bay of the 10-story structure, where the yard once built Navy subs, stands empty; but workers in the other bay are busy assembling the first pieces of the first Greek tanker.
Under the slogan ``Full Speed Ahead,'' the program will involve everything from tiny process improvements in a single shop to big shifts in how the yard works. All of the yard's 18,000 employees are being asked to contribute ideas about how to work faster.
``We're doing new things with old systems and old processes,'' Fricks said. ``I've been here 30 years and we've never taken the time to pause, sit back and ask how do these processes work.''
The yard is putting 50 people on a process improvement team charged with slashing shipbuilding time. The team will look at the five major processes between receipt of a contract and ship delivery - design, production planning, materials sourcing, steel fabrication and outfitting.
Members of the team will travel to world-class shipyards in Europe, Japan and Korea to see how those yards build ships so quickly.
``It's quite amazing what foreign shipyards have done in terms of the time it takes to build a ship and the number of people they need,'' the analyst said.
Newport News Shipbuilding plans to extend the process improvements to the yard's other products, though, Fricks added, ``you might not see an aircraft carrier delivered in four years instead of eight.''
Still the yard shaved seven months off the delivery of aircraft carriers when it delivered the John C. Stennis to the Navy last year. It did that with what Fricks called a handful of ``incremental'' process improvements; now, he's looking for ``breakthrough'' improvements. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by D. Kevin Elliott
Right: A stern section of the double Eagle tanker sits in a 10-story
module-outfitting facility Wednesday at Newport News Shipbuilding.
Above: William Fricks, the yard's chief executive talks to two
workers after announcing plans to speed up commercial work at the
yard.
KEYWORDS: NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING by CNB