The management of multiple projects of similar ships is an interesting challenge that offers cost-saving opportunities at the design stage when it concerns making the same changes on the same elements throughout several of the ships, avoiding repetitive tasks on each of them. This, in turn, leads to an increase in the complexity of the configuration and change management where same items existing on the multi-boat project are affected by a change but the modifications have to be carried out equally on some of the boats but not on the others. In order to achieve a useful solution, it is necessary to categorize both the ship projects to be considered within the multi-boat management and the changes to be made affecting the items of these ships, considering not only the type of change but also the number of ships affected by the change. Management of projects implies grouping them into sets with similar characteristics and matching same contractual requirements or specifications. As for the categorization of changes, we could distinguish between those changes that affect all the ships considered in the multi-boat project, or class changes, from the changes that affect a whole subset, or variant changes, and finally from those that affect several units or specific ships within a subset. This article address the different problems facing with the so called ship series and the solutions that can be adopted by a CAD strong linked with a PLM.
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