- Both South Korea and Japan possess strong shipbuilding sectors.
- The way they handle their shipyards and staff, along with constructing ships, provides possible answers for U.S. shipyards.
- Japan and South Korea rank as the second and third largest commercial constructors following China.
Fixing
US shipbuilding
Issues related to rejuvenating American naval power have risen to the forefront. Two Pacific allies boasting robust industrial sectors could potentially provide solutions.
South Korea and Japan are major shipbuilders, and US yards constructing Navy ships could learn from their approaches, a veteran naval affairs expert told lawmakers this week.
In a statement to the House Armed Services Committee’s Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee, expert naval affairs specialist Robert O’Rourke highlighted the success that allies like South Korea and Japan have seen in shipbuilding.
Their approaches include in-house worker training that can address capability, operations, and materials management issues, such as “monitoring and managing the flow of work through the shipyard on a continuous basis,” O’Rourke, a longtime Congressional Research Service analyst, said in written testimony.
They also embrace effective design and construction processes. South Korea, for instance, designs “ship sections with a strong focus on reducing the labor hours needed to produce them,” O’Rouke said. Doing so could mean enlarging ship sections to improve worker access to spaces and using straighter, less convoluted pipe runs “that take up more space but require less labor to produce and install.”
The expense of larger ship segments would be greater; however, the decrease in labor costs significantly compensates for this. He noted that the final outcome might render ships considerably “more straightforward and cheaper to construct, upkeep, and upgrade throughout their operational lifetimes.”
During a congressional hearing on Thursday, O’Rourke stated that
Insights could be gleaned from the shipbuilding approaches of both Japan and South Korea.
And the pair was referenced as being “virtually adjacent” when talking about top-tier practices for establishing global-standards in shipbuilding aimed at optimizing shipyard processes.
A different point of conversation centers on how Japan manages to keep a consistent purchasing pace despite fluctuations in troop numbers.
ongoing battle for the American shipbuilding sector
.
As O’Rourke and others pointed out, constructing commercial ships versus military ones involves several key distinctions. These include variations in production numbers, internal layout density and intricacy, propulsion technologies, resilience features, projected service lifespans, and the incorporation of weaponry and defense systems—factors which must all be carefully considered.
However, this doesn’t imply that there are no possible lessons which might be relevant to American shipbuilding.
In April, former Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro stated he was
impressed by South Korea’s shipbuilding capabilities
after a visit, especially digitization and real-time monitoring of shipbuilding progress, which included “regularly available information down to individual pieces of stock materials.”
The top executives of South Korean shipbuilders can accurately determine the precise date of delivery for vessels, he pointed out back then, which contrasts sharply with this.
The significant backlogs the U.S. experiences in ship construction.
capability, workforce availability, and assets.
The potential for the U.S. to leverage and adopt successful shipbuilding techniques from allies such as Japan and South Korea, or to collaborate more closely with their leading corporations, represents a key area of focus as both the U.S. and its Pacific counterparts scrutinize these approaches.
China’s dominant shipbuilding empire
and regional security concerns.
Both Japan and South Korea are competing with China,” O’Rourke stated, “and therefore they aim to maintain their market position vis-à-vis Chinese shipbuilders, driving them to enhance the efficiency of their own shipbuilding activities.
Automation and efficient production methods are crucial for accomplishing this objective. South Korea and Japan hold the positions of second and third largest shipbuilding nations, following China.
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