This article aims at finding a match between Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) and the preprocessing stage of shipbuilding. Preprocessing is the first stage of the ship production process, where steel plates are cut into parts, that are ground and sorted to build stiffened panels and ships’ sections. Quick Response Manufacturing is a management strategy with the aim of
reducing the time from the moment a customer creates an order, along the critical path until the delivery of that order to the customer. The strategy proposes a number of key points, of which the most eye-catching one is the organizational structure with a cellular organization.
To test whether QRM can make a beneficial change to the preprocessing department, a numerical simulation model is
constructed to resemble the processes taking place. It is found that the critical path of the process is defined by parts that are ground and flanged and that parts spend around ten working days in the preprocessing department. The key points of QRM are applied and a cellular organization is proposed. This leads to a reduction in lead time of 88% and an increase in annual throughput of 73%. It is concluded that indeed there is a match between QRM and the preprocessing stage of shipbuilding and the strategy can make a real change.

An improvement study to the pre-processing process of Damen Shipyards Galati (DSGa) is performed since benchmark analysis shows that the current pre-processing process underperforms, compared to industry peers. The objective is to increase DSGa’s throughput and decrease space utilisation, such that pre-processing facilities S1 and S1a can be merged into S1a and DSGa meets the industry ‘standard’. Lean Manufacturing shows the potential to enable improvement and is adopted to initiate process redesign. The Lean principles drive the approach of this study, which studies the ‘current state’, defines improvement strategies and implements the strategies in ‘future states’. Finally quantitative analysis shows that the objective is met.