Tag Archive for: TKMS

Building the future RAN: the potential for Australian–German industrial collaboration

Image courtesy of Flickr user swgn

Editor’s note: The Strategist has invited all three SEA 1000 contenders to explain their approach to meeting Australia’s future submarine requirement.

Germany undoubtedly has led the world into a fourth ‘industrial revolution’—Industry 4.0. With limited natural resources, Germany has grown to export over US$1.3 trillion of mainly high-value manufactured products annually.

The German export success is based on a number of factors, which offer some significant synergies for Australian industry.

Germany has encouraged and recognised the role of small and medium-sized, largely privately (often family) owned companies (so-called SMEs) as the powerhouse of innovation, productivity and manufactured exports. The large German conglomerates, such as Siemens, MTU, Rheinmetall and thyssenkrupp, have supported the German SMEs as a vital supply chain of innovation and competitive products and services for their international market penetration.

The German union movement is engaged in the nation’s productive enterprise and plays a constructive role in secure employment and continuous productivity improvement, innovation and the digitalisation of industrial processes.

Germany treated the re-unification of East and West Germany as an opportunity to invest in new infrastructure and modern productive capacity. As German industry is export market driven, it’s always striving for the latest innovative processes and products that are internationally competitive and desired. Its strong industrial base helped the country to cope with the 2009 financial crisis better than most.

Underpinning German industrial success has been a national policy called ‘Industrie 4.0’—the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. A vital element of this has been the development and implementation of advanced (digital) integrated product development and support environments (IPDSE) and wide application of novel technologies to interface, in the main, existing production tools and equipment. Those systems use sophisticated 3D design/development/monitoring tools and an unbroken digital thread that facilitates error-free numerically controlled production, operation and support. The result allows complete product lifecycle management (PLM), over the entire life of the product.

thyssenkrupp is a global technology company and it has led the way in digitising the shipbuilding industry in Germany and the world.  Both surface ships and submarines are designed and managed in an integrated product development and support environment.  At the heart of tkMS’ Digital Shipyard is Siemens’ PLM Teamcenter a system embraced by a handful of world-leading shipbuilders following its outstanding success in industrial sectors worldwide, including automotive, aviation, aerospace, chemical/resources processing, and shipbuilding programs. Around $700 billion of US military programs are now managed on Siemens PLM Teamcenter, including the nuclear-powered submarines at Electric Boat and the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

tkMS IPDSE (digital shipyard)  enables safe development and/or scale-up of new products with full integration of lessons learned from previous evolutionary product design/development, and elimination of errors and interface conflicts prior to production commencing. The 3D virtual digital models provide training and pre-production practice to improve productivity levels to the benchmark standard—regardless of geographic location.

The global supply chain can be integrated into a unified information and data management system that provides seamless communications while protecting classified information and IP. The 3D model and data-base is updated continuously to deliver the as-built configuration model for use by the operators through the lifecycle of the product. Efficiency gains of between 50% and 150% are realised from construction through the entire lifecycle.

Over the last two decades several leading submarine designers/builders have developed integrated design, production and sustainment systems that have revolutionised shipbuilding, particularly for highly complex platforms such as submarines and in one US case, nuclear aircraft carriers.

thyssenkrupp has progressively developed its ‘Digital Shipyard’ or IPDSE for its global operations and project delivery, worldwide. thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (tkMS) uses Siemens PLM Teamcenter as a core element in its IPDSE to design, deliver and support its naval surface ships and submarines to its many customer navies, whether they’re built in Germany or offshore.

This is a genuine breakthrough that enables design data and construction detail to be transmitted to any geographical location with absolute confidence so that the build program can be a mirror of the original. The digitalisation of the tk MS naval industry systems has enabled it to dominate the international naval market for surface ships and conventional submarines, delivering all its contracts on fixed prices.

If selected by the Australian Government as a partner for the Future Submarines Project, thyssenkrupp has committed to establish its ‘Digital Shipyard’ in Australia, and to establish a Shipbuilding Centre of Excellence (SCOE) in Adelaide, linked to the Siemens PLM centre at Tonsley Park, as well as to the tkMS ‘Digital Shipyards’ in Kiel and Hamburg, and the SCOE in Virginia, USA. That will establish a unique defence industry interoperability capability with Australia’s allies for both information and IP security.

The SCOE in Adelaide will extend to other industry centres in Australia—to enable all companies in the Australian supply chain to participate in the tkMS IPDSE and become part of the global advanced manufacturing process and supply chain. tkMS has met with around 500 such companies during the Future Submarines Competitive Evaluation Process and has identified nearly 3,500 Australian companies that could potentially participate.

The IPDSE is the future of manufacturing and it’s equally applicable to the smallest local SME as well as to the largest international conglomerate. It will provide the opportunity for Australian companies at all levels to join in this fourth ‘Industrial Revolution’ and be globally competitive. It can play a key role in putting into practice the Turnbull Government’s visionary innovation agenda for advanced manufacturing in Australia.

Naval shipbuilding in Australia: into the digital age

Essen - ThyssenKrupp Quartier Q1 02

SEA 1000 boils down to a straight-forward project for those who know how to deliver submarines in the export market to an overseas  techno-culture, and a very difficult project for those who don’t. The project has the potential to pull Australia’s naval shipbuilding into the digital age and set it on a reform path into the future. Or it could spell the end for domestic shipbuilding. The choice mustn’t be about submarine designs or strategic alliances; it must be about selecting the right submarine partner to work with Australia.

tkMS has delivered 163 submarines since 1960 to 20 navies (including 6 NATO navies) across the world who often operate in demanding environments similar to Australia, and built 51 submarines in 7 navies’ own countries. Most are highly customised designs and, like Australia, these submarines are required to be interoperable with the major maritime allies.

Much has been said about the size of the boats. While size isn’t a capability, it is the sum of capabilities. tkMS detected a trend to larger submarines driven by longer range and endurance requirements and the company commenced a concept design. By the time SEA 1000 started we had accumulated over five years of experience in design, testing and verification. Over 80% of the systems and equipment planned for Australia’s future submarine are proven at sea.

tkMS knows how to design and build big submarines. Modern digital design tools and the application of simulation software for testing hydrodynamics, noise signature and manoeuvrability ensure potential problems impacting the design specification are highlighted before the first steel is cut. An extensive network of tertiary and industrial research supports the tkMS design function. Submarines are an elite German defence capability, and have been declared a strategic technology by the German government.

Germany has set the pace for technologies in Air Independent Propulsion (AIP), diesel engines, propulsion motors and stealth technologies, all driven by the intensity of ‘Cold War’-like operations in the Baltic, North Atlantic and Mediterranean operating areas. Germany’s capacity has been repeatedly proven in NATO exercises and operations—without question the ‘A League’ of submarine operations, and activities an alliance to which Australia is an ‘enhanced partner’.

Without question data integrity is the holy grail of complex naval shipbuilding. tkMS is one of only a handful of modern submarine companies that design and build submarines in an Integrated Product Development and Support Environment (IPDSE). This Digital Shipyard™ enables submarine design, production and sustainment to be integrated as part of a seamless digital thread.

Companies like Electric Boat, Newport News Shipbuilding and Lockheed Martin have embraced the technology. tkKMS is using the Digital Shipyard™ to build eight submarines of four different designs, and to perform maintenance on another two boats. The life-cycle is already planned and sustainment programs are scheduled.

Why would anyone not want to design, build, test and verify the submarine and submarine production line before any physical material is assembled? IPDSE is the ultimate risk mitigation process. The SEA 1000 project must embrace this technology or it will struggle to shake off the problems that have plagued naval shipbuilding in Australia over recent years.

tkMS’s preference to build all submarines in Australia isn’t based on marketing whimsy. The reason tkMS prefers this option is because we are the only contender that will have an integrated tried and tested IPDSE for the build program. With such technology, production risks are mitigated to an extent that the geographical location of the shipyard no longer poses a significant project risk.

The ability to build all submarines in Australia ensures sensitive technology will be under Australian management from day one. There’s no risk of compromise as the only people with access to the US Combat Management System or weapons data will be security-cleared Australian or American citizens. By comparison the hybrid build option introduces greater security risk. Adherence to internationally agreed best practice cyber security doctrines will ensure all sensitive data is protected regardless of its location—Australia, Germany or the USA.

Andrew Davies is off-base on Lithium-ion batteries, which have been developed by TKMS over a number of years. Such a battery was successfully trialled in the Planet Solar, a solar powered trimaran that sailed around the world. New safer chemistry is undergoing trials and will be at Technical Readiness Level (TRL) 9 for the Future Submarine Project. Andrew also misunderstood the energy density difference between batteries (lead or lithium) and a reformer-fed AIP System. AIP reduces the snort frequency significantly. While it’s not critical in peacetime operations it becomes a matter of life or death in a hostile or highly-contested patrol area.

Mark Thomson’s questioning of Rough Order of Magnitude estimates from the CEP might be true of Japan or DCNS, but tkMS’s ‘hot production line’ is overlooked by Mark. tkMS’s cost includes 28,000 line items interrogated and scaled as necessary using tried and tested methods to arrive at a cost. The 163 submarines contracted by tkMS have all been on a fixed price. While it’s difficult for stop-start production lines to maintain meaningful supply chain data, tkMS doesn’t have that problem.

Commentators who question the efficacy of the CEP are wide of the mark. It will identify the best submarine partner provided they possess experience across these key conditions:

  •         A track record of exporting submarine technology
  •         English as the technical language used in the exporting shipyard
  •         The partner has a current hot production line
  •         The partner employs at least 800 submarine technologists with a minimum of 10 years of experience
  •         A parent navy relationship
  •         A binding Government commitment to Australia

If these criteria were applied we would have avoided problems with both the Collins-class and the Air Warfare Destroyers. tkMS and Germany meet all of these criteria and without question are a safe pair of hands. If Australia wants to get it right and reform naval shipbuilding tkMS has the right credentials for the job.