Offshore shipbuilding industry is known for its highly customized products, which are in most cases tailor-made for specific missions. Being a traditionally conservative industry, it follows conventional design practices. Because of the urge to quickly respond to changing market situations and the need for a structured method to reuse design knowledge across different projects, modern design methodologies like modularization are of considerable interest in this industry. To implement modular thinking, it has to overcome many challenges such as non-functional engineering description of design, scaling, clustering, logistical issues, structural complexities etc. Different modular methodologies can be adopted to establish a modular product platform. Modular Function Deployment (MFDTM) is a popular theory of modularization with five distinct steps to identify the objects that should be modularized and optimize them for the whole manufacturing system. Application of MFDTM method reveals that among various spaces inside the accommodation of an OSV, crew single, crew double and officer’s cabins are the most appropriate ones to be modularized.Based on the output of MFDTM method and the vessel database from System Based Ship Design (SBSD) approach for OSVs, a decision support framework has been developed to assist the naval architect of the vessel to design the accommodation block. Standardized templates are used for arrangement of the modules. The spaces in the accommodation are categorized into three module classes. The DSF can calculate the optimum size, type and location of the modules according to design requirements and system constraints. The vessel database is used here to determine the required area for the spaces that are not standardized. The DSF is demonstrated by an illustrative example and later by a simplified real case study. A mock up of a user interface has also been developed to give an idea of user interaction with a computer tool based on the DSF. For the real case study, a small program has been developed containing some 1200+ lines of code, which can process simplified accommodation design cases.To build an effective DSS for designing the accommodation block of OSVs, standardization of spaces by modularization must be done with enough room for flexibility of design by designer intervention. This DSF exhibits the underlying logics and structure of such DSS, which can be very useful to the designers upon further development.

Given  the  necessity  to  achieve  vertical  integration  in  complex  NPD  projects,  this  study  offers  a perspective  on  the  implication  of  customers  and  suppliers  involvement  under  technological uncertainty.  The  purpose  of  this  work  is  to  use  SoSE  in  order  to  develop  a  framework  that  may support Marine system design in NPD under technological uncertainty. It has been assumed that it is possible to achieve the Pareto optimum with respect to the key variables influencing the success of the NPD process; furthermore, this study will explore the possibility to tackle the goal misalignment between Customer, Suppliers and OEMs interacting in an evolving scenario and to offer a decisional ground  for  the  mitigation  of  such  misalignment.  Concluding,  the  purpose  of  this  study  has  been expanded by answering three research questions on how Technological uncertainty influences NPD in  Marine  System  Design,  what  alternative  frameworks  can  be  used  to  structure  such  designs  and how System of Systems Engineering can be used to build such alternatives.  The structure of the model built in this report is based on the concepts related to Enterprise System of Systems Engineering (SoSE), Agency Costs and Transaction Costs theories. The analysis is based on a  case  study  where  a  propulsion  system  has  to  be  developed  in  order  to  meet  the  incumbent environmental deadline imposed by the Policy maker, while taking into account future adaptations.     Basing  on  the  results,  the  largest  misalignments  pertain  to  the  Value dimension,  where  the  actors prioritized different features depending on their different positioning of the actors in the value chain, leading to an increase of the Agency costs in the NPD. On the other hand, the possibilities to share the  knowledge,  to  split  the  costs  over  the  involved  parties  and  to  reduce  the  Transaction  costs represent  the  main  advantages  perceived  from  the  actors.  An  integrative type  of  structure  of  the collaboration  within  the  actors,  for  instance  establishing  a  Joint  venture  or  through  Integrated development, would reduce the misalignments.  Finally,  ABB  can  use  SoSE  in  order  to  manage  its  internal  R&D  process  and  the  involvement  of customers  and  suppliers.  In  general,  SoS  can  help  OEMs  in  dealing  with  uncertainty  thanks  to  the concept  of  fluid  boundaries.  As  a  consequence,  the  integrated  system  will  benefit  of  greater flexibility while complying with the requirements given by the customers and the suppliers.