The Smart Shipbuilding: Integrating Lean Tools with Industry 4.0 for Agile High-Performance Production

Abstract

Shipbuilders around the world continue to face significant challenges stemming from prolonged lead times, delayed work orders, and high defect rates in processes such as block fabrication, outfitting, painting, and electrical works. These issues are largely attributed to outdated practices in design, planning, quality control, and resource utilization, many of which have remained unchanged for decades. While lean manufacturing has been successfully adopted in various industries, its implementation in shipbuilding remains limited due to the perception that lean tools are exclusive to automotive production systems, such as the Toyota Production System (TPS). Proposed study offers an advanced integrated methodology that combines lean tools, quality management systems (QMS), and Industry 4.0 technologies to improve operational efficiency in shipbuilding industry. The proposed model demonstrates enhanced responsiveness, flexibility, and performance where comparative analysis proves its effectiveness before and after implementation that confirms measurable improvements in productivity and defect reduction, supporting its applicability for modernization across the shipbuilding sector.