Navantia’s new Open Units Workshop, located at the San Fernando shipyard, is designed to improve construction times and reduce costs for ship blocks intended for the Spanish Navy and other customers.
Navantia press release
Navantia’s shipyard in San Fernando has started building flat panels for the blocks of current projects in its Open Flat Units Workshop (TUAP), after successfully completing acceptance tests, operator training, and certification of hybrid laser welding procedures with the Lloyd’s Register classification society.
The workshop, which is the most significant investment in recent years at the San Fernando shipyard, is one of Navantia’s new facilities equipped with cutting-edge technology and a high level of automation that will shorten production times and costs and increase the quality of ships for current and future programmes for the Spanish Navy and other international clients.
The first programme to benefit from this workshop will be the AVANTE 2200 corvette programme.
This workshop also brings a technological leap that will revolutionize shipbuilding, thanks to hybrid laser welding that increases speed and produces with much fewer deformations and very controlled weld necks. Additionally, both the profile plasma cutting machine and the panel cutting machine have a high technological level, with high precision, performance, and reliability, achieving cutting speeds and qualities superior to those maintained until now.
This industrial success of this business unit has been possible thanks to the effort of the human team from the different areas involved in defining the work to be carried out during preparation, installation, operation, and final delivery. The commissioning of this innovative workshop has required the training of personnel as diverse as engineers from different functional areas, welders, cutting operators, as well as maintenance personnel, in subjects such as manufacturing strategy, operation of machines both in cutting and hybrid laser welding, as well as specific maintenance of the facilities.
According to Navantia digitalization and automation strategy to reach excellence in quality and delivery, following the commissioning of this workshop, the Digital Block Factory being built at the Ferrol shipyard and the Flat Panel Line at the Puerto Real shipyard will follow soon. Since 2019, Navantia has invested more than 540 million euros in modernization and transformation actions of its production processes that will place its centers at the level of the most advanced in the world.
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