Naval ship design-process analysis through dynamic social networks

ABSTRACT

Modern naval ship design is increasing in complexity as more and more systems are incorporated into the design process, leading to an increase in the number (and interdependence) of tasks that designers need to complete and progress through the design stages. This work develops a dynamic bipartite social network representation, separating the nodes in activities and individuals, with the aim to analyse and draw conclusions regarding the design process. A dynamic time-dependent graph (TDG) is constructed with the use of a presence function for the edges. Network properties (density, clustering, active tasks/designers) are expressed as functions of time, and node-wise metrics (centralities) reveal the key role of individuals in the naval ship design process, which is heavily-crowded with respect to tasks. Furthermore, application of the model to naval ship design data reveals interesting insights regarding the impact of COVID-19 and the design company’s adopted hiring policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Naval ship design
• design process
• rework
• social networks
• time-dependent graphs
• network clustering
• network centrality
• COVID-19

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Neil Harrison and Malcolm Robb for their input on developing this work and the Research & Technology team at BAES Naval Ships for the time invested in this work. The views expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of BAES.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/T517665/1] and BAE Systems (BAES).