Alain Houard, Vice President, Marine & Offshore industry at Dassault Systèmes: “none of our projects in Russia has been canceled”
Russia is set to actively develop its shipbuilding industry but state-of-the-art technologies are required for that. In the interview with IAA PortNews, Alain Houard, Vice President, Marine & Offshore industry at Dassault Systèmes, shares his opinion on availability of modern software in Russia, global trends and new solutions in this industry as well as the impact of international sanctions on the Russian market.
- What is your opinion about availability of modern software in Russia. What should be done to raise the country to the level of global leaders in shipbuilding industry?
- Russia is well provided with modern software for ship design. However, comparing with such countries as France, Norway, China, Germany, we can see potential for Russian companies to invest and develop more actively. Today, 2D design is still heavily used and many in the industry will tell you that it’s good enough, but, in reality, that’s no longer the case. A 2D drawing leaves too much room for misinterpretation and design errors that are then very expensive to correct at the manufacturing stage. Drawing up the blueprints for a ship or a platform is a challenge made harder by the fact that shipyards have to work to increased complexity and constantly changing regulations.
- What are the latest trends in this sphere?
- Now we see a transition to the new level, where 3D model becomes the main document replacing blueprints, and where the robotic technologies are implemented into shipbuilder’s operation like at an automobile assembly plants, where an integration of information systems takes place in order to rapidly exchange of information between process actors.
Looking at the benefits of 3D design, simulation, and manufacturing, it’s easy to see its appeal in an industry increasingly reliant on complex engineering. It’s going from modeling ships and platforms to managing them during their entire lifecycle to testing and evaluating the ultimate experience that will be delivered to passengers and crew. Intelligence can be injected to allow designers to avoid much of the repetitive work and focus on innovation. It’s also possible to input specific constraints that need to be respected.
- What about operation on the Russian market? Do international sanctions affect it?
-On the Russian market, we cooperate with leading shipbuilding companies.
In regards to international sanctions against Russia, they do affect the technological market in Russia, but I would also like to emphasize that none of our projects in Russia has been canceled. There are certain restrictions on the product provision for the military shipbuilding and difficulties with licensing, however, we have organized corporate training for customers in Russia to teach them how to work with our products.
- What products does your company offer?
- If we talk about the range of our products, we offer such solutions specifically designed for the Marine & Offshore industry based on 3DEXPERIENCE platform, like On Time To Sea, which is intended for planning, control and monitoring of suppliers in a single environment and Designed For Sea, which helps to avoid costly engineering errors while developing projects thanks to the possibility to model, calculate and study alternatives.
The cloud-based solution Express For Sea includes all stages of a marine project from requirements definition through design and manufacturing, including project management, providing companies an integrated project management environment.
Interviewed by Vitaly Chernov.
