On Efficient Use of Plural Docks in Ship-Repair Yard

Abstract

While ship repairing industry has advantages of long business life cycle and stable profit rate which are characteristically seen in good business line, it also has some disadvantages, such as small turnover ratio to initial investment, high labour cost percentage in total cost make-up which makes the industry always liable to labourers' wage raise, and great fluctuation of aggregate labour hours day by day, which is difficult to be levelled due to short and limited working time till completion in infinite variety of kinds of repairs of many ships to be worked at a time. The writers, using simulation methods, studied repair yard operations on, in particular, 1) adequate numbers of docks and quays to be invested (which requires huge investment), 2) consolidated use of plural docks and quays to maintain high efficiency of their operations under placed condition, 3) mobility reservation in repair organization for constant and prompt compliance with orderers' needs (which serves directly for a good relationship with orderers), 4) correlation between the number of docks and levelling of aggregate labour hours. In this paper the contents and conclusions are introduced of which the authors wish to interest the readers.