Improve Ship Design Success by Utilising Proactive Elicitation to Enhance Communication Among Diverse Stakeholders

Abstract

Ships serve as crucial tools for maritime transportation and account for over 80% of global trade. However, the boundary between naval architecture and the maritime industry has existed for 150 years since the first Industrial Revolution. Despite the current ship design processes ensuring compliance with standards, a significant gap exists in effectively communicating and incorporating diverse stakeholders' expectations and desires during the ship design process. This communication gap may lead to a potential risk for incidents and compromise safety. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes to use proactive elicitation as a means to enhance the communication between various stakeholders and naval architects. To verify the impact of proactive elicitation on ship design success, discrete event models were developed in the study to simulate the ship design process. The simulation results demonstrated that the earlier the proactive elicitation is applied to ship design, the higher the level of design success can be achieved. In the short term, this approach can assist shipyards in the timely delivery of ships, while in the long term, it fosters improved compatibility between stakeholders and ships, enabling effective adaptation to future complex design conditions.