HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering is teaming up with Siemens to build an artificial intelligence (AI)-based shipyard that digitally links the entire process from ship design to production, logistics, inspection, and sea trials.
HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, the intermediate holding company for HD Hyundai's shipbuilding institutional sector, said on the 24th that it signed a main contract on the 23rd (local time) in Washington, D.C., with Siemens Digital Industries Software to introduce a "next-generation marine platform." Attendees at the signing included CEO Kim Hyung-kwan of HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering and Siemens CEO Tony Hemmelgarn.
The next-generation marine platform is a system that integrates information generated during ship design and production, supply chain and quality management, and maintenance into a single data set based on a three-dimensional (3D) model. It aims to allow each process to use the same information and to deliver design changes or process status in real time to the production site and supply chain.
HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering expects this to reduce schedule delays and quality issues and enable decision-making in line with process conditions. It also plans to create a "virtual shipyard" that recreates a real shipyard environment in digital space to simulate work processes and facility operations.
Going forward, the company will advance the platform and use it to build a "physical AI" shipyard where robots and autonomous production facilities operate on their own. The plan is to establish an autonomous manufacturing system that consolidates the entire shipbuilding process from design to production, logistics, inspection, and sea trials in a digital environment.
Tony Hemmelgarn, CEO of Siemens, said, "By combining Siemens' industrial AI and Digital Twin technology with HD Hyundai's superior shipbuilding operations capabilities, we plan to build a standard blueprint for innovation in shipbuilding," adding, "This collaboration will greatly help maximize ship productivity and quality, as well as work productivity, while significantly strengthening the competitiveness of the global shipbuilding industry."
Kim Hyung-kwan, CEO of HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, said, "AI is not simply a tool to raise productivity but an innovative technology that redefines how the shipbuilding industry operates," adding, "We will build a future smart shipyard that combines AI and digital technology to set a new standard for the shipbuilding industry."
Since Chairman Chung Ki-sun took office in Oct. last year, HD Hyundai has elevated the dedicated organization overseeing the group's AI technology development to report directly to the CEO. The inaugural head of the AIX Promotion Office is CEO Kim Hyung-kwan.