A ship construction cost data management system

Abstract

The Merchant Marine Fund—FMM—is the main source of financing for shipbuilding and shipping industries in Brazil. As an official system, it operates under favoured and strictly regulated terms. Since the interest rates are subsidized, the shipyards are required to present a detailed ship construction budget. The FMM Agency and the commissioned governmental banks in charge of the loans management are supposed to assess those budgets to prevent overpricing and production inefficiencies. Historically, the budget assessment process has been conducted without formal technical foundation, relying on subjective judgement of the analysts. However, due to the evolution of compliance requirements in governmental institutions and projects, the need for technical improvement of FMM management has become evident. The Decision Support System discussed in this article was developed in this context. Besides the relevance as an analysis tool, in terms of the quality of the approved projects, the database is a valuable instrument, for example, to monitoring maritime industry evolution, design of ships and transport systems and shipbuilding supply chain evaluation. With these objectives, a Decision Support System was developed, aiming at integrating the functions of managing the capture and validation of the database inputs; structured and non-structured queries; statistical analysis of the main cost drivers; and assessment of the total cost of projects submitted by the builder and the owner. The present article discusses the main features and economic impacts of the FMM system. Moreover, the article aims at discussing the structure and functionalities of the Decision Support System.