2017.tel .8128

FACULTY MECHANICAL, MARITIME AND
MATERIALS ENGINEERING
Delft University of Technology Department Marine and Transport Technology
Mekelweg 2
2628 CD Delft
the Netherlands
Phone +31 (0)15-2782889
Fax +31 (0)15-2781397
www.mtt.tudelft.nl
Specialization: Transport Engineering and Logistics
Report number: 2017.TEL.8128
Title: The batch production of jackets

for offshore wind turbines
Author: S.C.J.M. Kuijs
Title (in Dutch) De batch productie van jackets voor offshore wind turbines
Assignment: Masters thesis
Confidential: no
Initiator (university): Ir. R.R. Negenborn
Initiator (company): Ir. G. van Noordt (Heerema Fabrication Group, Zwijndrecht)
Supervisor: Ir. M.B. Duinkerken
Date: May 25, 2017
This report consists of 84 pages and 8 appendices. It may only be reproduced literally and as a whole. For
commercial purposes only with written authorization of Delft University of Technology. Requests for consult are
only taken into consideration under the condition that the applicant denies all legal rights on liabilities concerning
the contents of the advice.
TUDelft
Delft University of Technology
FACULTY OF MECHANICAL, MARITIME AND
MATERIALS ENGINEERING
Department of Marine and Transport Tecfinology
Mekelweg 2
2628 CD Delft
the Nethedands
Phone +31 (0)15-2782889
Fax -F31 (0)15-2781397
www.mtt.tudelft.nl
Student: S.C.J.M. Kuijs Assignment type: doctoral assignment

Supervisor (TUD): 1^1.B. Duinkerken Creditpoints (EC): 35
Spuervisor (EXT): G.J. van Noordt Report number: 2017.TEL.8128
Specialization: TEL Confidential: No
Subject: Batch production of jackets for offshore wind turbines
Heerema started in 1948 as a small construction company in Venezuela. In the 1980s it expanded to
the North Sea oil and gas industry with the fabrication of offshore modules and jackets. Jackets are
structures used as stable platforms for oil and gas production facilities. Heerema built up considerable
expertise with EPIC (Engineering, Procurement, Installation and Construction) contracts, which
achieved cost reductions for their clients. Currently Heerema Fabrication Group is an international
organization specialized in the engineering and fabrication of large and complex structures
for the offshore oil and gas and energy-related business. Heerema is specialized in producing large
one of a kind project with high precision.
The offshore industry is currently collapsing, therefore a switch to the wind turbines could be a great
opportunity. Offshore wind is one of the fastest growing maritime sectors. Heerema is familiar with
the production of jackets, however this has always involved one unique product. Possible ways to
build the jacket with lower costs could be: optimization and standardization ofthe design for mass
production, automation, by means of welding robots and/or other equipment, which would save high
cost in European personnel, and optimization of logistics and planning. The scientific relevance
consists ofthe possibilities ofthe transition from one-off production to a batch production.
Your assignment is to study the possibilities for the batch production of offshore windmill jackets.
Studying relevant literature as well as the current processes at Heerema, developing and
implementing a model, verification and validation of the model, experimenting, presenting solid
conclusions and recommendations and reporting the research work are all part of this assignment.
The report should comply with the guidelines ofthe section. Details can be found on the website.
Dr. Rudy Negenborn

Section Trans|Dort Engineering & Logistics
Dept. (Maritime & Transport Technology
Delft University of Technology
Acknowledgments
This document is a part of my Master of Science graduation thesis. The subject of this tis
the batch production for jackets for offshore wind turbines, which was suggested to me by
Gert-Jan van Noordt from Heerema Fabrication Group. He suggested several subjects for my
thesis, but the batch production for jackets for wind turbines especially appealed to me, be-
cause of both the logistic component and the contribution it could make to a more widespread
use of renewable energy..
I would like to thank my supervisor ir. M.B. Duinkerken and ir. G. van Noordt for their
assistance during the writing of this thesis. Secondly I want to thank dr. R.R. Negenborn for
chairing my exam committee and advising on improving my thesis. My parents, Chrétienne
Wiessing and Pierre Kuijs, have helped me with both advice on my thesis and supporting me
during the graduation process.
Delft, University of Technology S.C.J.M. Kuijs

May 25, 2017
Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

iv Acknowledgments
S.C.J.M. Kuijs Master of Science Thesis

Summary
Heerema Fabrication Group is currently producing one-off products, mainly jackets. Nowa-
days the market for these jackets for oil platforms is decreasing, while the market for jackets
for offshore wind turbines is growing. The challenge is to produce 50 jackets in one year, with
an optimal production line. The possibilities for a cost efficient design for a production line
and different ways to build and assemble the jackets are central in this research.
To get a good view at the opportunities at the wind farm market a desk research is executed.
A trade-off between different types of jackets is made, with as conclusion that the three-
legged jacket is the best option for a batch production of jackets for offshore wind turbines.
On multiple characteristics this trade-off is done and Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG)
delivered an applicable design.
A literature study is executed on different methods to design a production line and its re-
quirements. The main focus is on lean production and assembly line problems. From these
two methods multiple terms and ideas are used, such as the product wheel, takt time and
model assembly lines. The production systems, in other similar companies or industries, are
examined. One thing that clearly emerged from these similar companies and industries was
moving the painting to after the total assembly of the product.
The current production processes are analyzed and mapped, based on the logistic, material
and resource flow. The different bottlenecks were defined: blasting and painting, transport
and welding. With the current system mapped, knowing the bottlenecks and having a jacket
design, concepts for the production line can be realized. For this three-legged jacket different
building and assembly methods are designed, which could possibly speed up the process and
lower the costs.
Based on a morphological overview two design concepts are made; one with the blasting,
painting and drying at the end of the assembly process and one concept with the blasting,
painting and drying after the pre-assembly and before the assembly. The welding is totally
automated relative to the current system. Also the fitting is optimized by using fit molds and
fit-clamps. Subsequently, the transport is narrowed down in both the concepts. To compare
these different concepts and methods a simulation and calculation model are designed, testing
at the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): makespan of 50 jackets and costs.
With these models different experiments are executed: comparing the different assembly
methods and comparing the building methods and design concepts. Comparing the assembly

vi Summary
methods showed that the way to assemble really makes a different and the method with the
best drumbeat/product wheel had the lowest makespan. The outcome of other experiment is
that the current order of processes should be unchanged and that the use of stubs in jacket
designs is optimal with regard to the material savings. The automation of the welding is
needed to build the 50 jackets in one year, because it saves a lot of time. Building 50 jackets
in one year might be tight in time, but with working during some weekends it can be possible.

Samenvatting (summary in Dutch)
Heerema Fabrication Group produceert momenteel unieke producten, voornamelijk jackets.

Tegenwoordig neemt de markt voor deze jackets voor olie boorplatformen af, terwijl de markt
voor jackets voor offshore wind turbines groeit. De uitdaging van dit onderzoek is om in
een jaar 50 jackets te produceren, met een optimale productielijn. De mogelijkheden voor
een kostenefficiënt ontwerp voor een productielijn en verschillende manieren om de jacket te
bouwen en te monteren staan centraal in dit onderzoek.
Om meer inzicht te krijgen van wat er gaande is op de wind turbine markt is hierover infor-
matie verzameld. Daarnaast is er een afweging tussen verschillende soorten jackets gemaakt,
met als conclusie dat de driebenige jacket de beste optie is voor een batchproductie voor jack-
ets voor offshore windturbines. Deze afweging is gemaakt op de verschillende eigenschappen
van de jackets. Heerema heeft vervolgens een gedetailleerd ontwerp voor de jacket geleverd.
Een literatuurstudie is uitgevoerd naar verschillende methoden om een productielijn te ontwer-
pen en de eisen voor een productielijn. De nadruk ligt vooral op lean productie en assemblage
lijn problemen. Uit deze twee methoden worden meerdere termen en ideeën gebruikt, zoals
het product wiel, de takt time en de verschillende mogelijkheden van montagelijnen voor
het productiesysteem. De productiesystemen, in andere soortgelijke bedrijven of industrieën,
die in serie of batches worden geproduceerd, worden onderzocht. Een belangrijk aspect wat
hieruit naar voren kwam is het verplaatsen van het schilderproces, in plaats van voor de totale
assemblage naar na de totale assemblage van het product.
De huidige productieprocessen worden geanalyseerd, gebaseerd op de logistieke, materiële
en bronnen stromingen binnen het productiesysteem. De verschillende knelpunten werden
gedefinieerd: stralen & schilderen, transport en lassen. Met het huidige systeem in kaart
gebracht, de geïdentificeerde knelpunten en het hebben van een jacket ontwerp, kan het con-
cept voor de productielijn gerealiseerd worden. Voor deze driebenige jacket zijn verschillende
bouw-en assembleermethodes bedacht, waardoor waarschijnlijk het proces kan worden ver-
sneld en de kosten worden verlaagd. Op basis van een morfologisch overzicht worden twee
ontwerpconcepten gemaakt; ontwerp 1 met het stralen, schilderen en drogen aan het einde
wanneer het jacket helemaal geassembleerd is en een concept met het stralen, schilderen en
drogen na de prefabricatie en voor de assemblage, waarbij onderdelen worden geschilderd.
Het lassen is in de concepten volledig geautomatiseerd ten opzichte van het huidige systeem.
Ook het fitten is geoptimaliseerd door gebruik te maken van geschikte mallen en klemmen.
Vervolgens wordt het transport verlaagd in beide concepten. Om deze verschillende concepten

viii Samenvatting (summary in Dutch)
en methoden te vergelijken, worden een simulatie- en berekeningsmodel gemodelleerd, waarbij

wordt getest met behulp van de KPIs: doorlooptijd van 50 jackets en kosten.
Met deze modellen worden verschillende experimenten uitgevoerd: het vergelijken van de ver-
schillende assembleermethoden en de bouwmethoden en ontwerpconcepten vergelijken. Door
de assembleermethoden te vergelijken, bleek dat de manier van assembleren duidelijk verschil
maakt en dat de methode met de beste drumbeat/productwiel de laagste doorlooptijd had.
Het resultaat van het tweede experiment is dat de huidige volgorde van processen onveranderd
moet zijn en dat het gebruik van stubs in jacketontwerpen optimaal is met betrekking tot de
materiaalbesparingen. De automatisering van het lassen is nodig om de 50 jackets in 1 jaar
te kunnen produceren, omdat het veel tijd bespaart. Het bouwen van 50 jackets in 1 jaar kan
alleen wanneer er af en toe in het weekend doorgewerkt wordt.

Glossary
List of Acronyms
HFG Heerema Fabrication Group
EPIC Engineering, Procurement, Installation and Construction
UK United Kingdom
FIFO First-In-First-Out
KPI Key Performance Indicator
LB Line balancing
ECRS Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, and Simple
C Cycle time
DBR Drum Buffer Rope
CCR Capacity Constraint Resource
BMO Bilfinger Mars Offshore
ALP Assembly Line Problem
JS Job Shop
FS Flow Shop
HIC Heerema Innovation Center
WR Welding Robot
FC Fit-Clamp
PA Pre-Assembly
A Assembly

x Glossary

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments iii
Summary v
Samenvatting (summary in Dutch) vii
Glossary ix
List of Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
1 Introduction 1
1-1 Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1-2 Research motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1-3 Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1-4 Research goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1-5 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1-6 Research question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1-7 Sub-questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1-8 Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 Desk research 7
2-1 Wind farm market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2-2 Foundations types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2-3 Jacket foundation types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2-4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

xii Table of Contents
3 Theoretical framework 15
3-1 Push and pull market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3-2 Lean production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3-3 Assembly Line Problem (ALP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3-4 Automatic assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3-5 Operation scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3-6 Batch production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3-7 Case studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3-8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4 Current System Analysis 33

4-1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4-2 Stubs versus point-to-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4-3 System boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4-4 Flow chart of the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4-5 Material flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4-6 Logistic flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4-7 Resource Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4-8 Bottlenecks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4-9 Current capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4-10 KPIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4-11 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5 Design of Production Line and Jacket 41

5-1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5-2 Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5-3 Changes in production process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5-4 Material flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5-5 Resource flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5-6 The logistic flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
5-7 Design Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
5-8 Product wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
5-9 Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5-10 Key Performance Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
5-11 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Table of Contents xiii
6 Modeling 53
6-1 Overview model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6-2 Assumptions for the simulation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
6-3 Input and output variables of the simulation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
6-4 Description of the conceptual model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6-5 Implementation of the conceptual model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6-6 Verification and validation of the simulation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6-7 Assumptions for the calculation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6-8 Input and output variables of the calculation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6-9 Calculation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
6-10 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
7 Experimental plan/results 69
7-1 Assumptions for the experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
7-2 Number of replications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
7-3 Input file for the simulation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
7-4 Variables for the different experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
7-5 Base scenario building method A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
7-6 Comparison of building method A, B and C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
7-7 Material savings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
7-8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
8 Conclusion and recommendations 79

8-1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
8-2 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
8-3 Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
A Paper 85
B Drawings 93
C Takt Time 95
C-1 Working shifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
C-2 Part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
C-3 Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
C-4 Part 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
D Simulation model 99
E Cost model 103

E-1 The cost model in excel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

xiv Table of Contents
F Tables 105
F-1 Experiment 1: base scenario building method A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
F-2 Experiment 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
G Graphs 109
H Input file 113

List of Figures
1-1 The size of a relatively small jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1-2 The jacket Gina Krog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1-3 The jacket BorWin Alpha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1-4 The different parts of a jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1-5 A scope of the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2-1 Employees in offshore wind for different countries in Europe: on the x-axis the year
and on the y-axis the number of employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2-2 Left: the operating projects in wind energy for each company in percentage. Right:
the announced projects, 2015-2020, for the different companies mentioned under-
neath. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2-3 Left: the operating projects with specified percentage for each kind of foundation.
Right: the announced projects with specified percentage for each kind of foundation. 9
2-4 from left to right: mono-pile, tripod, jacket, gravity base, floating substructure . 10
2-5 From left to right: twisted, 3-legged, 4-legged and hexa-base jacket . . . . . . . 12
3-1 The DBR principle explained in a easy concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3-2 The 5S methodology with the main aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3-3 Different line assembly methods [1] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3-4 The flow chart for line balancing [2] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3-5 Example of plant topology [1] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3-6 Examples of potential effects when Design for Assembly is used in product devel-
opment [3]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3-7 A modern assembly line in the automotive industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3-8 The hall of Bladt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3-9 Assembly of jackets at the company Harland & Wolff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3-10 Multiple jackets shown at the yard in the UK from Smulders . . . . . . . . . . . 29

xvi List of Figures
3-11 Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3-12 Different assembly strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3-13 Calculation of ST 3 Offshore about cost reduction [4] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4-1 The current system with the main processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4-2 Left: point-to-point Right: stubs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4-3 The Flow Chart of the current system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4-4 Left: a stub fitted to a leg, right: a circular weld of two pipes . . . . . . . . . . 36
4-5 The pre-assembly hall next to a jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4-6 Left to right: Multi-wheeler, Overhead crane, Crane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5-1 Left to right: building method A, B and C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

5-2 The different assembly methods for building method A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5-3 Fit Clamp on 49 inch x 0.625 weld pipe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
5-4 Design concept 1: The pre-assembly, assembly and blasting & painting process . 48
5-5 Design concept 2: Pre-assembly, blasting & painting and assembly process . . . . 49
5-6 The Product wheel of the jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5-7 The distribution of the costs for a jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6-1 The overview of the simulation and calculation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

6-2 The process flow chart of both concepts: left is presented concept 1 and on the
right concept 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6-3 The pre-assembly process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
6-4 The different pre-assembly for every building method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
6-5 Assembly Process Flow Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
6-6 Blasting, painting and drying Process Flow Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6-7 Simplified building method of the model development process [5] . . . . . . . . . 61
7-1 The different makespan for building method A1, A2 and A3 with different number
of welding robots added on the x-axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
7-2 Design concept 1: The costs versus the makespan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
7-3 Design concept 2: The costs versus the makespan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
7-4 Comparison of the best options for both the design concepts: the costs versus the
makespan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
7-5 The costs + material costs versus the makespan for the best building methods for
the two design concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
8-1 The optimal assembly method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
C-1 The different parts in the production process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

C-2 The different kind of nodes in building method B and C for the assembly . . . . 97
D-1 The simulation model for design concept 1: the pre-assembly . . . . . . . . . . . 99

List of Figures xvii
D-2 The simulation model for design concept 1: the buffer and transport between the
pre-assembly and assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
D-3 The simulation model for design concept 1: assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
D-4 The simulation model for design concept 1: the blasting, painting and drying . . 101
D-5 The simulation model for design concept 2: the buffer, transport and blasting,
painting and drying between the pre-assembly and assembly . . . . . . . . . . . 101
G-1 The number of replications versus the confidence interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

G-2 Design concept 1: The costs + material costs versus the makespan . . . . . . . 110

xviii List of Figures

List of Tables
2-1 The importance of each property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2-2 Properties versus type of jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4-1 Different Jacket Productions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5-1 Number of weldings needed and material savings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

5-2 Morphological overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
5-3 Fitting Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5-4 Welding Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
5-5 The material costs for a jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6-1 Model description verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

6-2 The different building methods verified for walking through the right process steps
in the simulation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6-3 Data validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6-4 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6-5 building method A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6-6 building method B and C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6-7 The costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7-1 Process design concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

7-2 Building methods for building method A, B and C for subsection 5-4-2 . . . . . . 69
7-3 Set values for the variables that are not going to be varied in the experiment . . 73
7-4 Set values for the variables that are not going to be varied in the experiment for
design concept 1: blasting & painting at the end of the production line (- means
it can be varied) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
7-5 The best options for the two process design concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
7-6 Deviations from the base material savings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

xx List of Tables
C-1 The working hours at HFG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
F-1 The variables for the welding robots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

F-2 Ranges of each variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
F-3 Experiments variables Design Concept 1: building method A . . . . . . . . . . . 106
F-4 Experiments variables Design Concept 1: building methods B and C . . . . . . . 106
F-5 Experiments variables Design Concept 2: building method A . . . . . . . . . . . 107
F-6 Experiments variables Design Concept 2: building methods B and C . . . . . . . 107

Chapter 1
Introduction
The subject of this thesis is the design of a production line for the foundation structures
of offshore wind turbines, the so-called jackets. In figure 1-2 and 1-3 two examples of four-
legged jackets are presented. The company Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG) wants to
decide whether it would be cost efficient to invest in the production of jackets for offshore
wind turbines. The size of a jacket should not be underestimated, in figure 1-1 a relatively
small jacket is presented. Looking at the people standing next to it, the height of a jacket is
shown.
Figure 1-1: The size of a relatively small jacket
Heerema started in 1948 as a small construction company in Venezuela. In the 1980s it

expanded to the North Sea oil and gas industry with the fabrication of offshore modules and

2 Introduction
jackets. Heerema built up considerable expertise with Engineering, Procurement, Installation

and Construction (EPIC) contracts, which achieved cost reductions for their clients. Currently
HFG is an international organization specialized in the engineering and fabrication of large
and complex structures for the offshore oil and gas and energy-related business. They build
jackets, topsides and drilling platforms. Heerema is specialized in producing large one of a
kind projects with high precision. At the end of 2015, HFG had 797 employees, and a revenue
of 595 million euros that year [6].
Figure 1-2: The jacket Gina Krog
Fossil fuels - coal, natural gas, and oil - supply the vast majority of the energy needs. Nowa-
days, renewable energy is an interesting concept in the global society, energy produced from
sources other than the primary energy supply. In 2015 5.8 percent of the energy in the
Netherlands originated from renewable sources. In a European context it has been agreed
that the target for 2020 is that 14 percent of total Dutch energy consumption must come
from renewable sources [7]. One of these options is wind energy. The wind farm industry
is growing every year, especially since a lot of companies are interested to invest in green
energy. At the HFG, one of the two major divisions of offshore company Heerema Group, 450
of the 770 (permanent) jobs will disappear. Therefore, investing in renewable energy could
be a solution for HFG.
1-1 Size
Jackets are large structures used as stable platforms for oil and gas production facilities. Two
jacket are presented in figure 1-2 and 1-3. The base of a jacket is a tubular construction which
is welded together. There are a lot of different jackets produced by HFG. To get an idea of
the dimensions of a jacket two of these projects will be briefly illustrated.
The largest jacket constructed by HFG is Gina Krog [1-2].
Size (L x W x H): 60 x 50 x 142 m, weight: 17.000 tons.
A much smaller jacket produced by HFG is BorWin Alpha [1-3].
Size (L x W x H): 39 x 33 x 60 m, weight: 1.500 tons.
HFG produces three-and four-legged, straight and tapered jackets. For every project they
design a new construction plan, but to build the jacket the same processes are always executed.
On the other hand, the assembly methods for the different jacket can differ between different
projects: sometimes the jacket is built on its side and other times it is built upright.

1-2 Research motivation 3
Figure 1-3: The jacket BorWin Alpha
1-2 Research motivation
The offshore industry is currently collapsing, therefore a switch to wind turbines could be
a great opportunity for HFG. Offshore wind is one of the fastest growing maritime sectors.
At the end of 2012 the installed capacity was 5 Gigawatt and by 2020 this could be 40
Gigawatt, 4% of the European electricity demand [8]. And by 2030 the offshore wind capacity
can reach 150 Gigawatt. HFG is familiar with the production of jackets, however this has
always involved one unique product. Thus the focus for this thesis is: what are the different
possibilities to produce jackets in batch for offshore wind turbines and what could be the
optimal way to design and produce those jackets. The possibilities for designing an efficient
production line are looked af from a scientific perspective.
1-3 Problem statement
The great difficulty is, that up to now, no company has actually made profit with wind
turbines, therefore making profit with building a jacket is also difficult. A solution for this
problem could be to produce cheaper jackets than the competition; the tubular construction
is the biggest expense item of the jacket. Secondly, if the current production system would
be converted to a batch production line, HFG will produce 50 jackets in 15.2 years, not
even close to producing 50 jackets in 1 year, which would be a cost efficient amount and
sufficient to the customer’s demand. For this research the starting point is building 50 jackets
in one year. Possible ways to build the jacket with lower costs could be: optimization and
standardization of the design for mass production, automation, by means of welding robots
and/or other equipment, which would save high cost in European personnel, and optimization
of logistics and planning. The scientific relevance consists of the possibilities of the transition
from one-off production to a batch production.

4 Introduction
1-4 Research goal
The general purpose of the study is to design a production line for jackets which is cost
efficient and has a makespan which is equal to the demanded delivery time of the customer.
The production costs have to be determined with a high utilization of the equipment and work
force. The building methods of the jackets can be changed, and so can the assembly methods,
the logistic flow and planning, which will all analyzed. The bottlenecks and optimization
options in the current system have be determined, so that these can be taken into account
while designing the production line.
1-5 Scope
Since it is impossible to collect all data on this subject and explore every facet of the subject,
the scope of the research is narrowed down and subjected to limitations. The scope creates
opportunities to interpret the data in an optimal way and puts study into perspective. The
scope of this study is divided into two parts: the components of the jacket and the production
process flow over the yard. It will be described in more detail in the following paragraphs.
Figure 1-4: The different parts of a jacket
1-5-1 Components of the jacket
In figure 1-4 the different components of the jacket are presented. The focus is on the jacket,
thereby meaning the tubular construction. The pile sleeves, transition piece, anodes, etcetera
are left out of the jacket design to prevent it from becoming to complicated.
1-5-2 Production process flow
In figure 1-5 a rough sketch of the process flow is presented. The scope of this research is
indicated in the sketch, showing that the purchase and delivery of materials is left out of the

1-6 Research question 5
scope. The main focus is on the logistic processes on the yard: the total assembly of the
jacket and blasting and painting. In terms of transportation of the jacket parts: the focus is
on the wind-farm market in the United Kingdom (UK), because market analysis has shown
that the biggest market for wind energy is in the UK. The production for the jackets may
occur in Vlissingen or Hartlepool. By defining the yard where the production line will be
implemented, the size of the area is settled and can be added to the system boundaries.
Figure 1-5: A scope of the system
1-6 Research question
The research question is about the transition from project-based production to batch produc-
tion. The research concerns the logistic process, both for transport and production and the
way the jacket can be built.
What is the best design for a production line with cost efficient design, assembly and building
methods for the production of multiple jackets per year for offshore wind turbines?
1-7 Sub-questions
The following derived sub-questions contribute to answering the research question.

Sub-question 1: Which background information is available about the wind turbine industry
looking to the market, possible foundation structures and competing companies?
Sub-question 2: What are the best practices and requirements in the literature for produc-
tion processes?
Sub-question 3: How is the current production process arranged according to the HFG and
which bottlenecks are identified in the system?
Sub-question 4: Which concepts can be applied for the batch production, looking at the
production line and assembly and building methods of the jacket?
Sub-question 5: Which design concepts can meet the requirements of the defined Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs)?

6 Introduction
1-8 Approach
This thesis will be divided into chapters, which will each give an answer to a subquestion. In
the conclusion the research question will be answered based on the information discussed in
the different chapters.
In chapter 2 information about the background of offshore wind turbines is conducted. The
market, different foundations and competing companies are discussed. From this chapter
can be concluded which kind of jacket there will be produced in the production line. In
chapter 3 the theoretical framework is determined to solve the problem defined in section
1-3. Subsequently, some similar cases of production lines are analyzed to get ideas of possible
production lines and substantiate the theory.
Chapter 4 analyzes the current system using lean manufacturing methods. Based on this
model we will zoom in to the processes of the production flow. For each process it is de-
termined in how much detail every aspect should be described to get a realistic view of the
production process. In chapter 5 the demands for the design of a new batch production
line are defined. Aspects like alternative ways of producing the jackets, alternative ways of
composing the jackets, automation of the assembly and logistic flow are discussed, next to
optimization, takt time and the KPIs. Chapter 6 shows the two design concepts translated
into a conceptual model which is implemented into a simulation model. Chapter 7 presents
the results of the experiments executed with the simulation model designed for the different
building and assembly methods of the jackets with the two design concepts. In chapter 8 the
conclusion is given together with some recommendations for further research.

Chapter 2
Desk research
In section 2-1 the current market will be concisely presented, the different possibilities for
the wind turbine foundations are discussed. In section 2-2 the different kinds of foundations
are mentioned and compared to each other. Propagating on this are the different jackets
substructures analyzed and compared in section 2-3. A conclusion is drawn which kind of
jacket could be the best option for Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG) to start producing.
Figure 2-1: Employees in offshore wind for different countries in Europe: on the x-axis the year
and on the y-axis the number of employees
2-1 Wind farm market
An important aspect of the potential of the production of jackets is the demand for jackets.
For this purpose we glance at the wind farm market to look at a future prospect of the demand
for jackets.

8 Desk research
2-1-1 Economic opportunities
In the North Sea countries the opportunities offered by the offshore wind sector for economic
growth and job creation are increasingly apparent and acknowledged. The market of wind
turbine farms is slowly adapting to larger turbine sizes, which produce 10 MW or even more.
OEM’s, Siemens and Vestas have indicated that they will produce these 10 MW or more wind
turbines by 2020.The Danish Energy Agency recently released a tender that could support
the deployment of prototype turbines with up to 50 MW of capacity to help accelerate the
commercialization of turbines and other technologies that have the potential to drive cost
reduction [8].
Figure 2-2: Left: the operating projects in wind energy for each company in percentage. Right:
the announced projects, 2015-2020, for the different companies mentioned underneath.
At the left pane in figure 2-2 operating by June 30, 2015, Siemens has dominated the market
with a 62% share, followed by MHI Vestas at 18%, and Senvion at 9%. At the right pane in
figure 2-2 the market share for the pipeline through 2020 shows more balance in the market
in the future.
Figure 2-3 shows the market share for offshore wind substructures for the operating projects
and project pipeline through 2020, it also reveals that mono-piles have historically been the
dominant substructure with 75% market share. Mono-piles are followed by jackets (10%
share), gravity bases (8%), tri-piles (5%), and high-rise pile caps (2%).
In the future mono-piles are expected to largely preserve their dominance of the market
representing 65%. Jackets are expected to gain market share, moving up to 16%, reflecting
the industries move to deeper water sites and larger turbine sizes. Floating substructures
are emerging with a possible 7% market share based on project announcements. Gravity-
base structures have lost market share from 8% to 2% to mono-piles and jackets. However,
advanced gravity base structures, have the potential to be competitive in the future [8].

2-2 Foundations types 9
Figure 2-3: Left: the operating projects with specified percentage for each kind of foundation.
Right: the announced projects with specified percentage for each kind of foundation.
2-2 Foundations types
Several challenges to develop future offshore wind farms are emerging: a lot of money will
be involved in these projects, tight schedules and many competitive companies. In addition,
the wind turbines will be larger and placed in deeper waters with harsher sea areas and more
extreme weather conditions. These factors will make future projects more expensive and risky.
For the energy production it is interesting to install larger wind turbines that can capture
more energy from the wind. Thereby the annual energy production will grow and therefore
the revenue [9].
It is worth considering to choose a foundation design for the wind turbine that is robust, quick
and cost-effective to install and hereby minimizing risks and costs. Quality is an important
factor for the foundation, because the foundation will be made in a batch production and any
defects or mistakes could occur in almost every foundation that is produced [9].
The most common used foundations are the mono-pile, gravity base, tripod and the jacket.
The mono-pile is currently produced most, they are used to build most of the offshore wind
farms in shallower water near shore. The main advantage of the mono-pile is the simple design
and manufacture. There have been multiple failures at the connection between the mono-pile
and the transition piece. The transition piece connects the mono-pile with the wind turbine.
Additionally there is no experience with mono-piles for wind turbines with more than 5 MW
and a depth of 35 meters and beyond. Also driving the pile of these extremely large structures
into the seabed requires a huge amount of energy. The environmental impacts of the noise
and drilling the large structures into the seabed must be considered too.
A tripod foundation consists of a framework of relatively slender members, connected to the
main tubular by means of a joint section. From the main joint downwards the transfer of
loads relies mainly on axial loading of the members. The tripod has a larger base, which gives
it a larger resistance against overturning. The piles are also mainly loaded axially, thereby
the tripod can be shallower and lighter than the mono-pile foundation. As the base is made
up of relatively slender beams, it is transparent, allowing water mass to pass through the
structure relatively unobstructed. Furthermore, the main joint is a complex element that is

10 Desk research
Figure 2-4: from left to right: mono-pile, tripod, jacket, gravity base, floating substructure
susceptible to fatigue and requires much effort in designing and engineering.

Gravity-base foundations are the second most popular, they support smaller turbines in shal-
low waters near shore in locations with a rocky seabed. Concrete gravity bases can be success-
fully deployed at all upcoming wind farms around the UK coast. The gravity base foundation
combines this with self-installation to avoid the need for specialist and expensive marine
equipment.
Jackets can be a solution for deeper water, because they are less risky, less costly and more
reliable than mono-piles and gravity-base foundations. The jacket can be designed with three
or four legs connected by slender braces. The focus of this research is on the production
process of jackets.
2-3 Jacket foundation types
Different type of substructures based on lattice frame jacket have used to support offshore
wind turbines: twisted, three-legged, four-legged, hexa-base, penta-base jackets. Every type
of jacket will be discussed in this section and an overview of the different properties are shown
in table 2-2.
2-3-1 Properties for the jacket design
For the decision of which jacket design to use for the production line different properties are
important.

2-3 Jacket foundation types 11
• The size and the weight of the construction is significant to know how much steel is
required for the production.
• The number of joints is meaningful, because it determines the number of welds and
thereby influencing the time to weld. Knowing that less joints are need to be produced,
the entire structure will be easier to manufacture.
• For the durability of the wind turbine, the stability of the substructure is of great
importance.
• Another relevant requirements is, if the technology used for the jacket is proven for the
production of offshore jackets.
• The environmental impact like noise is important to know for the surroundings.
• The costs of the production of the jacket is a crucial property, thereby knowing if it is
achievable to produce these jackets.
Based on these properties a well-considered decision will be made for the type of jacket
foundation. Not every property is equally important, therefore each property will be given a
number between 1 and 3 of its importance, shown in table 2-1.
Table 2-1: The importance of each property
Importance
Size / weight 1
Number of joints 1
Stability 3
Proven technology 3
Environmental impact 2
Costs 2
2-3-2 Twisted jacket
The twisted jacket is presented in figure 2-5 at the left. The jacket is more expensive and
complex to fabricate and install compared to the other kind of jackets. There have been
several tests with a metallic mast, but it has not yet passed the proven technology test for
wind turbines. The jacket requires twisted piling, it needs center pile-drive, vertical while the
jacket sits over it.
2-3-3 Three-legged jacket
The three legged jackets, presented in figure 2-5, have the minimum number of legs, therefore
less joints and less piles are needed to manufacture the jacket. Secondly steel reduction, which
will lead to material and installation savings. Also by driving fewer piles into the seabed,
there is less noise and environmental impact. They also hold the level while the grout sets
between the jacket and the pile is better than the four legged jackets. The reason is that
three points of support defines a plane whereas four support points can define more than one
plane. However if one leg fails, the three-legged jacket becomes very unstable. This is feared,

12 Desk research
Figure 2-5: From left to right: twisted, 3-legged, 4-legged and hexa-base jacket
especially in the oil and gas industry, where the consequences of this kind of failure are very
serious. In the wind industry the consequences would not be that serious and therefore the
industry should focus on finding solution to this problem and make use of the advantage of
three-legged piles.
2-3-4 Four-legged jacket
Four legged jackets, also shown in figure 2-5, have the largest market share and a proven
track record of their performance as foundations is available for offshore wind turbines in
deeper water depths. The four-legged jacket have one leg more than the three-legged jacket
and thereby about 20% material savings. On the other hand the four-legged jacket will not
collapse if one leg fails. For the jacket proven technology is used, next the jacket can withstand
the conditions at water depth of 35 meters and beyond.
2-3-5 Hexa-base jacket
The hexa-base jacket, the right picture in figure 2-5, uses standard pipe sections in lattice
structures. The idea of these jackets is to cut the cost of steel but at the same time they
are much more complicated and costly to manufacture. Innovative form makes the founda-
tion more efficient and economically efficient, but not proven technology for wind turbine
foundation.
2-3-6 Decision jacket design
The decision for which jacket design will be used for the production line is done by making
a comparison. This is done by adding value to different properties for each type of jacket,
for each of these properties they get a number between 1 and 5. In table 2-2 the values for
the different properties are presented. With in the last column a weighted average with the
importance of each property added from table 2-1.
After comparing the different type of jacket foundations there can be concluded that the
three-legged jacket is the best jacket design to use for the production line.

2-4 Conclusion 13
Table 2-2: Properties versus type of jacket
Size/ Number Proven Environmental Weighted

Stability Costs
weight of joints technology impact average
Twisted jacket 4 5 3 1 4 2 5.17
3-legged jacket 5 5 4 5 4 5 9.17
4-legged jacket 3 3 5 5 3 4 8.33
hexa-base jacket 2 1 5 4 1 2 6
2-4 Conclusion
From this chapter can be concluded that the jacket is the most currently interesting invest-
ment for wind turbine foundations. Especially because jackets can be used for deeper water
locations. The three-legged jacket is chosen as the best option for the batch production look-
ing at the construction and the amount of material. When looking at other batch productions,
like BMO bilfinger [3-7-6] and automotive industry [3-7-2], one thing that stands out is that
the painting process takes place at the end of assembling the parts, in comparison to other
production processes the different order of processes can be interesting.

14 Desk research

Chapter 3
Theoretical framework
This chapter contains definitions of common terminology and concepts, and the theoretical
framework of this research. In later chapters, this theoretical framework will be used to
analyze the current system, and to design a new production line. Section 3-1 discusses the
difference between a push and a pull market. In section 3-2 the meaning of lean manufacturing
and the main definitions are exemplified. Section 3-3 describes the theory for the assembly
line problem and the important definitions. In section 3-7 is viewed at the production system
of similar companies and different industries. In section 3-7-2 the batch production of auto-
mobiles is discussed to look for similar aspects. Section 3-4 explains automatic assembly and
in section 3-8 the used approach is described.
3-1 Push and pull market
For the design of a production process, it is of added value to determine if it concerns a push
or a pull market. Depending on the kind of market the problem of designing a production
line should be tackled different. Pull market means that the product is made to order, in
which the production is based on the actual demand of the client. There will be produced
only when the client gives orders to the producers. Push market is a strategy where the client
gives an order to the producer about the amount and kind of product. It means that the
producer makes the product to stock, the production is not based on the actual demand of
the client.
3-2 Lean production
Lean manufacturing is concentrating on an optimal flow for a production line, maximum

value-adding of the customer and everybody in the organization helps. Some activities used
by lean manufacturing which helps to analyze a current system are: task analysis, value stream
mapping (VSM), spaghetti chart, find out wastes and improvement, consider to change some
process steps and brainstorm for design concepts [10].

16 Theoretical framework
3-2-1 Lean wastes
One of the aims of lean manufacturing is to avoid waste within the production system. In
the lean manufacturing wastes are referred to as Muda, a Japanese word for waste. Waste is
defined as anything other than the minimum amount of equipment, materials, parts, space
and worker’s time, which are absolutely essential to add value to the product. Toyotas
Taiichi Ohno identified seven forms of waste. He formulated his Muda list for manufacturing:
however his theory also applies equally to product development and order processing and
other activities of any business.
For example, one of the original wastes is excess inventory. Company developing software
will not have physical inventory, but the waste of uncompleted or waiting projects can be
counted as inventory. Irrespective of the type of industry, the 7 Wastes provide a guiding
set of principles to help identify and reduce non-value adding activities. In the principal of
the 7 Wastes, there is the thinking that extreme use of resources, idle resources, unnecessary
movement of resources and defective resources are all wastes and needs to be eliminated.
Transport: It is the movement of materials from one location to another, therefore there
is often unnecessary transport and handling of products. Transport does not make any
transformation (value addition) to the product that the customer is paying for. And every
time the product parts are moved there is more chance of damage.
Inventory: Unnecessary raw material, work-in-progress or finished goods represents as inven-
tory. It hold the capital of the company and influences cash flow.
Motion: An unnecessary movement of people, machines or tooling that does not add value
to the product from customer viewpoint.
Waiting: Time the product is not transported or in between work stations the product is
waiting. Higher amount of inventory results to long waiting time and is non-value activity.
Over-processing: Doing more work on product than required by the consumer. It’s adding
steps to the production process that do not add value to customer.
Over production: Producing more products than actual demand by the customer at that
particular time.
Defects: In case of defects, rework needs to be performed in order to solve the problem. These
results in higher costs of manufacturing which the customer is not paying for, it does not add
value to the product.
3-2-2 Value added and non-value added operation
An operation in the production can be called a value added or a no-value added activity.
In the production line the cost of all resources, materials, transportation and man hours
determine the total cost of the final product. Every work task is assessed for the value of the
final product, therefore each operation is significant for the price the customer or the market
will pay for the product.
Operation value = Product value after operation - Product value before operation

3-2 Lean production 17
3-2-3 Product wheel
Product wheels have been derived from one of the common lean manufacturing tools, pro-
duction smoothing or heijunka, where the aim is to reduce or eliminate waste. The tool is
defined by King as: "A visual metaphor for a structured, regularly repeating sequence of the
production of all the materials to be made on a specific piece of equipment, within a reaction
vessel, or within a process system."
Using the product wheel can help reduce changeover times by scheduling products in an
optimized sequence. Therefore, applicability at continuous process and lines of semi-process
industries can be beneficial. Product wheels can be applied at a machine when flow is not
continuous or even well synchronized and each step of the production process is separated
by the others within process inventory. Or it can also be applied at an entire line when the
production line has continuous flow. Therefore, candidates for a product wheel application
include any step in the process, individual piece of equipment, or any entire production line
that has appreciable changeover times or losses [11].
3-2-4 Takt time
Takt time is the basic rate of production, also referred to as the drumbeat for the process
of production [12]. The takt time determines how often a part should be produced based
on the customer demand. When zooming in on the product, a takt time per part can be
determined. If your customers order 240 pieces a day and your workday is 8 hours, therefore
the takt time is 480 minutes/240 pieces = 2 minutes per processing step. Depending on the
production plan shaped according to customer demands, number of products that will leave
a production system on a daily basis is a known data. Takt time can simply be defined as
the required time that must elapse between two consequent product completions. This is also
equal to the time for each work-piece on the line taken from its arrival to the current station
until its arrival to the next station. Takt time is a function of product volume and available
production time [13].
The takt time of a production tells the system how much there must be produced. The
customer demand can be variable over time, therefore the elements in a production must
always be prepared for peak production. The takt can be integrated over a period of time
to smooth out variation. The product wheel can find the most reasonable period of the
production [2].
Net Available Production Time

Takt time = (3-1)
Demand
Drum Buffer Rope (DBR): the slowest sub-product determines the speed of the production
process. In figure 3-1 the ratio between the drum, the buffer and the rope is shown. The DBR
logistical system is a finite scheduling mechanism that balances the flow of the system. DBR
controls the flow of materials through the plant in order to produce products in accordance
with market demand with a minimum of manufacturing lead time, inventory and operating
expense [14].

Figure 3-1: The DBR principle explained in a easy concept
Drum: the rate at which the constraint resource is able to process. A correctly set ’drum beat’
will ensure that the constraint resource always has just the right amount of work, neither too
little nor too much, to process.
Buffer: depending on the size the buffer can prevent a bottleneck by having parts ready in
the buffer for the next process. The size of the buffer can be calculated by knowing how much
time the processes need and how much parts need to be used for the process.
Rope: this is an information ’link’ from the Drum to the raw material release schedule, so
that the constraint is always kept supplied with just the right amount of work.
In any plant, there are only a few Capacity Constraint Resources (CCRs). All CCRs are iden-
tified, and the various orders that are to be processed through them are scheduled according
their capacity potential and to the market demand. The schedule established for the CCRs
determines the drum beat for the system [15].
3-2-5 5S methodology
This tool is a systematic method for organizing and standardizing the workplace. It is one
of the simplest lean tools to implement, provides immediate return on investment, crosses
all industry boundaries, and is applicable to every function with an organization. Because
of these attributes, it is usually our first recommendation for a company implementing lean
[16]. In figure 3-2 the methodology is presented in the right order: sort, set in order, shine,
standardize and sustain.
Sort: keep the important aspects in the process and make the process easier by eliminating
obstacles. Evaluate necessary equipment with regard to cost or other factors.
Set in order: remove the unnecessary activities and clean the aspects you have, so that you
can find them quick. Ensure first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis and make work flow smooth and
easy.
Shine: keep things clean and keep workplaces safe and easy to work.
Standardize: standardize the best practices in the production system.
Sustain: the employees should be trained and have a lot of discipline in their work.

3-3 ALP 19
Figure 3-2: The 5S methodology with the main aspects
3-2-6 Lean Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Lean KPIs and process/performance metrics help managers, engineers and process improve-
ment leaders in the following: determining the current performance of the system or process
being evaluated, determine the appropriate performance benchmark, evaluate the progress of
lean and process improvement initiatives or Kaizen.
At times they may not be tangible measures, and can take different names, or be specific to
a process or industry, but their goal to explain performance is essentially the same. Most
managers, operations consultants and process improvement leaders will have a wide variety
of KPIs and metrics which explain the performance of a business, operating strategy, supply
chain strategy or manufacturing facility. Although measuring performance and deriving it
into its key drivers is beneficial in order to see what is happening or not happening, it is what
is done with the results of the analysis what is really important.
To determine the KPIs there is talked with the stakeholders and the S-M-A-R-T rule is used
[17]. The KPI has to be specific; it has to be clear what the KPI measures and one widely-
accepted definitions. The KPI has to be measurable to define a standard to make it possible
to measure the actual value and make it comparable. The KPI has to be achievable, relevant;
it has to give more insight in the performance and time phased; the value of KPI expressing
in time.
3-3 Assembly Line Problem (ALP)
The process of fitting together various parts in order to create a finished product is the
assembly. The flow-line production system with a number of stations (n) is the assembly line.
In this line multiple tasks have to be run through. For assembly line multiple definitions are
important and stated below.
Task process time
The necessary time to perform a task is called the task process time. The precedence con-
straints determine the order in which tasks are performed.

Cycle time (C)

The cycle time (C) of the time between the exit of two consecutive products from the line.
The desired C is what the planning pursued while the Effective cycle time (EC) the real time
is by which the line will operate. The Capacity Supply (CS) is defined as the total time
available to assemble each product. The time interval measures the interrelation between the
cycle time and the task times.
Total assembly time
The work content of a station is referred to as station load, the total process time as station
time. The sum of station times of the whole assembly line is the total assembly time.
Throughput time
The throughput time is the average time interval between launching a work-piece down the
line and removing the finished product from it. [18]
3-3-1 Bottlenecks
In almost every process are bottlenecks, this can be workstations which has a limited capacity
that reduces the capacity of the whole chain. Identifying bottlenecks are critical for improving
efficiency in the production line, because it allows to determine the area where accumulation
occurs. If bottlenecks are not recognized enough, the chance to increase the capacity is missed.
Costs per hour on a bottleneck equals to the loss of one hour for an entire supply chain and
also the loss of the capacity of an entire supply chain. To check the simulation model for
bottlenecks the occupancy rate of the workstations can be requested. With knowing the
occupancy rate of the concerned machinery/employee the number of these variable can be
adjusted and thereby improving the occupancy rate.
3-3-2 Assembly methods
There are two primary methods of assembly for production, namely bench assembly and
line assembly. For bench assembly the work-piece stays stationary all required parts and
equipment for assembly are brought to the bench. Line assembly is an assembly method
where work-pieces move through a sequence of stations for assembly one piece at a time. An
assembly line (AL) is the production system in which assembly stations are organized in a
serial layout and line assembly method is applied [13, 19].
3-3-3 Assembly line models
The three different assembly line models are shown in figure 3-3.
Single-model AL
This is the traditional form, one single product without any variation is produced. Nowadays
products without variation can seldom attract enough customers. The single-model AL is
used when the demand is constant, when there must be delivered in a very short time, the
assembly needs heavy and bulky machines and when the set-up and operation time does not
show significant variation [1, 18].

3-3 ALP 21
Mixed-model AL
Products which have the same functions, but have multiple variations. A typical example is
a family of cars with different options, like sunroof, ABS, etcetera [20]. The mixed-model line
can be used when the product must not be delivered in a short time. And when each product
is quite similar to the other products, the same resources are needed for the assembly and
the set-up time between models could be reduced enough to be ignored [1, 18].
Multi-model AL
The homogeneity of assembled product and their processes is not sufficient to allow for pro-
duction sequences. The assembly is organized in batches to avoid set-up time and costs. The
main factors that make this different are the slow demand of products, the short time delivery
and the short set-up time [1, 18].
Figure 3-3: Different line assembly methods [1]
3-3-4 Line balancing (LB)
LB is an effective tool to improve the throughput of assembly line while reducing non-value-
added activities and the makesapn. LB is the problem of assigning operation to workstation
along an assembly line, in such a way that system is optimal. The rebuilt strategy for a
single-model assembly line is based on the principles of Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, and
Simple (ECRS) and the theory of production Line balancing is given and evaluated by the
model. The flow chart of line balancing is shown in figure 3-4. Finally, comparing with the
former production line and then implementation of the new strategy makes the production
efficiency and quality improved greatly.
3-3-5 Task process time
Deterministic time
The task time is constant only for advanced machine and robots, they are able to work
permanently at a constant speed. For manual tasks the task time is only constant for highly
qualified and motivated workers, but most of the time this cannot be assumed [18].
Stochastic time
Variation in task time is from non-qualified workers, lack of training, lack of motivation,

Figure 3-4: The flow chart for line balancing [2]
etcetera. In automated lines, the varying production rate may result from machine break-
downs. The varying process time will lead to buffer sizing problems and resources duplication
[18].
Hidden time
In the case of automated stations, it is often difficult to determine the operating time of a
complex task, two or more grouped tasks. Indeed, the process time of a station is not always
the sum of the operating times of each equipment in the group because of the so-called hidden
times.
Dynamic time
In the case of human workers, systematic reductions are possible due to the learning effects
or successive improvements of the production process. For new tasks, operators take longer
times to execute the operation than after becoming familiar with them.
3-3-6 Line configurations
In the plant layout problems are often put on material flow between departments. The analysis
of the product and the plant shape lead to a global layout of the Assembly Line. For this
Assembly line multiple line configurations are possible.
Serial lines
Single stations are arranged in one line. Each station performs one or more tasks on the
partially finished product.
U-line
By using the JIT production principle. The advantage of the U-shaped line is the increased
communication, minimize the material handling, more compact and facilitating team work.
Parallel stations
With high production rate, the longest task time sometimes exceeds the specified cycle time.
By creating parallel or serial stations where can be worked on the bottleneck unit of the
production, the cycle time can easier be obtained. When multiple stations are positioned

3-4 Automatic assembly 23
next to each other and do the same procedure and thereby reducing the average value of the
task.
Parallel lines
Sometimes the entire assembly line for one part is duplicated when the demand is high enough.
This will require more equipment and tooling, but on the other hand, when a failure occurs
in a line, the other line can continue to run [1].
Figure 3-5: Example of plant topology [1]
Work centers
For complex products, the system is most of the time decomposed into sub-systems (work
centers). The work centers are easier to manage than the entire system. The routing of a
product between work centers is fixed, as it works according to a flow topology shown in
figure 3-5.
3-4 Automatic assembly
Increased labor costs forced companies during the 1960’s to focus more on automatic assembly.
In the following ten years knowledge about the relation between product design features and
automatic assembly process increased 1. Many of the Design For Assembly methods available
today are focused on manual assembly. Several aspects are different in comparison between
manual and automatic assembly. For example, humans are very flexible in movement, speed,
vision, force and in the ability to feel if an operation is correct. For a robot these aspects
are not that simple. With a good producible design, automation projects can be successful
2. The design of a manual production line should be optimized in such a way that it can be
used for an automatic production line.
The short-term benefits are often easy to accomplish, almost every product has the potential
to reduce the number of parts. Any part that is excluded from the production process means
less orders, assembly, material, documentation, storing, handling, testing and so on. With
fewer parts, the assembly time will be reduced and therefore lower costs ??. In figure 3-6 the
effects of DFA in product development are shown.

Figure 3-6: Examples of potential effects when Design for Assembly is used in product develop-
ment [3].
3-5 Operation scheduling
3-5-1 Performance measures
Makespan: of a simulation model is the total time that elapses of the batch from the beginning
to the end. By assigning tasks to equipment and employees in such a way taht the simulation
model finishes in the shortest possible time. With the use of the makespan the steady state
value of a model is not important anymore, because this time needs to be included in the
makespan of a run.
Makespan = Time of completion of last job of the batch - Starting time of the first job of the
batch
Total Inventory: used to measure the effectiveness of schedules for manufacturing processes.
Minimizing total inventory supports the competitive priority of cost.
Utilization: the degree to which equipment, space or workforce is used, measured as the ratio
of the average output rate to maximum capacity. Maximizing the utilization of a process
support the maximum use of the tools.
3-5-2 Job Shop (JS)
A JS specializes in low- to medium-volume production and utilizes job or batch processes.

Jobs in divergent flow processes are difficult to schedule because of the variability in job
routings and the continual introduction of new jobs to be processed.
3-5-3 Flow Shop (FS)
The FS includes all the activities in the same order under the same conditions and is thereby
a standardized product. In the traditional FS scheduling problem, it is assumed that there

3-6 Batch production 25
is only one machine at each stage to execute passing jobs. Scheduling is one of the most
important decisions in production control systems. Every production system should have a
kind of production scheduling, no matter whether it is managed and organized traditionally
or have a systematic and scientific approach to the planning in the production system [21].
3-6 Batch production
Batch production is used in manufacturing, in which the product is build stage by stage
over a series of workstations, and different batches of products are made. Together with job
production (one-off production) and mass production (flow or continuous production) it is
one of the three main production methods. By using batch production the capital outlay can
be reduced because a single production line can be used to produce several products. On the
other hand inefficiencies are associated with batch production when the equipment must be
stopped. The idle time between batches is known as down time.
3-7 Case studies
In order to substantiate the various theories, versatile examples from practice are discussed
about mass production in general. There is also briefly taken a view at a different indus-
try, namely the automotive industry for interesting concepts. Subsequently, multiple similar
companies are analyzed, such as Bladt, Smulders, Harland & Wolff and Bilfinger Mars Off-
shore (BMO), to get extra ideas and substantiation from the theory. About BMO is found
a lot of information, for the other companies there is not a lot of specific information about
their production system.
3-7-1 Mass production
In other industries, like aviation, satellites and automobile, batch production takes place on
different levels. In the aviation industry the product weights between 5.6 ton and 135 ton. In
the automobile industry the weight of a vehicle has a maximum of 2.5 ton and the satellites
have an average weight of 10 ton. The basic principles of mass production could be interesting
in comparison to the ideas for the batch production of the wind turbine jackets.
General principles of mass production
The efficiency of mass production comes from the systematic application of the ideas and
concept conceived in the past.
1. The division of the total production operation into specialized tasks comprising rela-
tively simple, highly repetitive motion patterns and minimal handling or positioning of
the work piece. By organizing this very carefully, a lot of benefit is in the production
time and this permits the development of human motion patterns that are easily learned
and rapidly performed with a minimum of unnecessary motion or mental readjustment.

2. The simplification and standardization of component parts to permit large production

runs of parts that are readily fitted to other parts without adjustment. The imposition of
other standards (dimensional tolerances, parts location, material types, stock thickness,
common fasteners, and packaging material) on all parts of the product further increases
the economies that can be achieved.
3. The development and use of specialized machines, materials, and processes. The selec-
tion of materials and development of tools and machines for each operation minimizes
the amount of human effort required, maximizes the output per unit of capital invest-
ment, reduces the number of off-standard units produced, and reduces raw material
costs. This includes the automation of the production process by using robots.
4. The systematic engineering and planning of the total production process permit the best
balance between human effort and machinery, the most effective division of labor and
specialization of skills, and the total integration of the production system to optimize
productivity and minimize costs.
Skilled industrial engineering and management are required to achieve the maximum benefits
that application of these principles can provide. The planning starts with the original design
of the product: raw materials and component parts must be adaptable to production and
handling by mass techniques. Production volume must be estimated because the selection of
techniques depends on the volume to be produced. In addition to lowering cost, the applica-
tion of the principles of mass production has led to major improvements in uniformity and
quality, by using a standardized design and materials. A major problem of mass production
based on continuous or assembly line processes is that the resulting system is inflexible. Since
maximum efficiency is desired, tools, machines, and work positions are often quite precisely
adapted to details of the parts produced, but not necessarily to the workers involved in the
process. Flexibility in product design could be a solution for this problem.
Figure 3-7: A modern assembly line in the automotive industry

3-7 Case studies 27
3-7-2 Automotive industry
The traditional examples of mass production is the automotive industry, the basic principles
are laid down by Henry Ford. In figure 3-7 a modern assembly line is presented, today’s
automobile is the result of a large number of mass production lines established in a multitude
of manufacturing and assembly facilities throughout the world. The control for the flow of
material into and out of final assembly plants, including the scheduling of production from
feeder plants and the timing of rail and truck shipments, is among the major engineering
tasks that make the total mass production system for automobiles work. In the early lines,
the products were very standardized.
Nowadays, the mass production produces a highly customized product. The same assembly
line produces a variety of models with many colors and options. This is achieved by continued
insistence on standardization of critical elements such as the methods by which parts are held
together internally. The designed production-control systems operating in the automotive
and other industries make it possible for the consumer to obtain a greatly enhanced variety
of product without sacrificing the cost advantages of mass production techniques. In the
automotive industry the painting of the cars is after the final assembly of the frame of the
car. Therefore at first all the main parts of the frame are put together and then the frame
can go through the painting process.
3-7-3 Bladt
Figure 3-8: The hall of Bladt
The company Bladt currently produces 30 jackets for the Beatrice foundation. Before they
produced 41 jackets in 16 months in Denmark. They make use of a hall, which partly is built
in the ground, where the ceiling can be moved, shown in figure 3-8. Thereby they can easily
lift the jacket from the hall on to the deck. They can build two relatively small jackets next
to each other.
The assembly takes place without turning the jacket, everything is assembled from the ground
until the top.The jacket is painted after it is totally assembled.

3-7-4 Harland & Wolff
At the company Harland & Wolff the assembly of the jackets is done outside, in the dry-
building dock, shown in figure 3-9. This dock is multi-functional, because it can be covered,
small parts can be produced there and an overhead crane can lift the jacket and put is straight
up.
The nodes for the jacket are produced inside, in a hall. Before the jacket is assembled the
parts are already blasted and painted.
Figure 3-9: Assembly of jackets at the company Harland & Wolff
3-7-5 Smulders
Over the years, Smulders has grown from pioneer to a dominant market leader with a track
record of over 1,000 produced transition pieces. In addition, they offer extensive high level
expertise in the design, engineering and production of substations. Full substations and their
foundations, jackets or transition pieces are produced at it yards.
They are mainly producing transition pieces in batches to different customers. For the pro-
duction of jackets for offshore wind turbines they are now producing 28 jackets for Seaway
Heavy Lifting for the Beatrice foundations. About the details of the assembly line is not much
information available, only a few facts:
• The jackets are assembled on its side.

• By an overhead crane the right parts are transported to their place at the jacket.
• The blasting & painting takes place after the assembly.
• Multiple jackets are assembled at the same time in a hall.
• In one hall about 10 to 15 places are used to assemble smaller parts.

3-7 Case studies 29
Figure 3-10: Multiple jackets shown at the yard in the UK from Smulders
3-7-6 BMO
The new production plant site in Poland is specifically designed for batch production, they
can manufacture transition pieces and jacket foundations for water depth over 60 meters,
combining consistently high standards with maximum efficiency. In fact, they will be capable
of producing up to 50 jackets per year and 80 sets of jacket components. The entire plant,
which is operational from mid-2015, covers an area of 220,000 square meters. Around 100,000
square meters are dedicated to fabrication, the rest left as storage capacity for completed
foundations. A Greenfield site, the buildings and production flow are streamlined for batch
production. The plant is perfectly located: Szczecin is close to the German border with
a direct shipping route to the Baltic Sea and from there to the North Sea. This means
short transportation routes to all target markets in North Europe. However, one of the most
important advantages and services is the plants huge storage capacity with space for more
than one annual output.
Figure 3-11: Costs
The supply of the plant includes:
• Production of up to 80 transition pieces per year, partly mono-piles

• Production of up to 50 jackets per year and 80 sets of components

• Corrosion protection
• Secondary steel
• Storage capacity for more than one annual output
Figure 3-12: Different assembly strategies
Supply chain concept
The high production costs versus the low production quantities the jackets are put at a com-
petitive disadvantage compared to monopiles. For jackets a cost reduction of 30% is required
to be competitive, one way to become competitive is via an industrial fabrication process.
The concept of Salzgitter AG is a modular design principle: (1) supplying of standardized
pipes, (2) pre-fabrication of assemblies (the K-and X-nodes). In figure 3-11 are the costs
shown divided in different aspects of the jacket.
Figure 3-13: Calculation of ST 3 Offshore about cost reduction [4]
In figure 3-12 the different assembly strategies are shown. building method A is an application
of standardize pipes and pre-fabricated X-,K-nodes, building method B is a delivery of long
legs and braces made of standardized pipes. building method C is a delivery of long braces
and pre-fabricated K-nodes made of standardized pipes.

3-8 Conclusion 31
Building method A offers the highest saving potential of ca. 20%, this means 600.000 eu-
ro/jacket. The savings are containing of material costs (-20%), welding/NDT cost (-28%),
logistic/documentation (-22%) and crane-/scaffold cost (-22%).
By designing the jacket differently, costs can be decreased for different aspects in the produc-
tion of jacket. The cost reduction by the use of stubs is shown at the right drawing in figure
3-13. At the left drawing in figure 3-13 the original way of welding is shown with their costs,
point-to-point welding. From the calculations of ST 3 Offshore has emerged approximately
7% material savings and 15% welding and non-destructive testing savings [4].
3-8 Conclusion
The purpose of the literature study was to view the different possibilities to analyze a system
and design a production line. The theoretical framework used for this research will be a
combination of the theory described in this chapter. First analyzing the current system with
the use of the different flows in the system, secondly finding the bottlenecks and knowing the
value added and no-value added operations. Then use lean wastes to notify where the wastes
are. For the design will be looked at the 5S methodology and with a morphological overview
of the different options, compiled by the theory of automatic assembly and batch production,
designing a new production line.


Chapter 4
Current System Analysis
This chapter describes the current way of producing jackets at Heerema Fabrication Group
(HFG). In section 4-1 the current production system is outlined briefly. Section 4-3 provides
the system boundaries for the production system. In section 4-4 a flow chart illustrates all
the processes and activities in the current system of jacket production. According to the
lean manufacturing theory, there are different flows distinguished: the material, logistic and
resource flow. These three flows are analyzed for the current production process and discussed
in the sections 4-5 till 4-7. The bottlenecks in the current system are described in section
4-8. Section 4-9 contains a short explanation why the current production system is not
usable for the production of 50 offshore wind turbine jackets per year. The Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) for the current system are presented in section 4-10.
4-1 Introduction
Figure 4-1: The current system with the main processes
To analyze the current system it is mainly important to know which process steps are done and
in which sequence it takes place. The current production line is totally manually fabricated.
The different processes in the production system and the flows are described. The material
for the jacket comes mainly from Poland, they produce relative cheap pipes at the right
sizes for HFG. The material is delivered at the yard where the pipes are transported to the
storage area. For this research, information is obtained by interviewing employees, analyzing
schedules of producing the jackets and using an execution plan for a jacket. In figure 4-1 the
current production process is displayed. The process is divided into three main processes:
pre-assembly; blasting & painting and assembly.

34 Current System Analysis
4-2 Stubs versus point-to-point

By using stubs, short pipes will be welded to the leg. The weld can be welded partly from the
inside, this creates a much better distribution of the fatigue of the material and therefore the
weld is stronger. For this reason the other pipes in the tubular construction can be designed
with a smaller wall thickness, which leads to material savings. And by material savings the
costs are lowered. Another advantage of stub welding is that easily a welding robot can be
used and the part is more flexible because it are smaller parts.
Point-to-point welding is the old-fashioned way of welding two pipes together: a cross is
welded to a leg. This can only be done to the outside of the pipe, therefore this weld has a
higher volume to get the same strength as the welds with stubs. In figure 4-2 the difference
between point-to-point and stubs is visualized.
Figure 4-2: Left: point-to-point Right: stubs
Currently stubs are not used a lot, only when the customer asks specifically. The reason
is that more welds are needed in the construction, which will take a lot more time. In the
current situation no material savings takes place, because the steel supplier only delivers in
completion of 5 mm. In one jacket can be around 150 welds, only the welds for the stubs.
4-3 System boundaries

In section 1-5 the scope of the research is determined, when looking at analyzing the current
system the same scope will be endured. For extra focus on the right aspects system boundaries
are defined:
• The time to design and plan the production of the jacket is not taken into account in
the flow chart and the makespan of the process.
• The delivery times of the materials on the yard are neglected.
• The release of the jacket is no concern for the production system, the area will be free
after assembling the jacket.
• The delivered materials are in the right shape and size.

4-4 Flow chart of the system 35
4-4 Flow chart of the system
Figure 4-3: The Flow Chart of the current system
The processes and activities for the production system of a jacket are translated into a flow
chart in figure 4-3. Almost every process in the production system runs through the same
activities: fitting and welding. Only the blasting and painting exists of other activities. The
flow chart is used as the base for the production system, from here out the different processes
and flows are described in the following sections. In this section the two main activities are
explained: fitting and welding.
4-4-1 Fitting
For the fitting activity the parts which should be welded to each other are aligned together
in the best possible way. The parts are mounted to each other with fit-plates, also called
fitting-up. Fitting for a circular weld and branch weld (stubs or crosses), shown in figure 4-4
are done differently.
For a branch weld a circle is drawn on the leg where the stub should be fitted. The fitting
of a stub to a leg takes up to 10 hours in the current production system. The fitting process
is 20% of the total time needed in the assembly hall. Multiple checks by different parties
guarantee that the so called ’fit-ups’ meet the requirements set by HFG. After the fitting
process a ground layer is welded. this is a thin layer on the inside of the stub which holds
the stub and the leg together. After the ground-layer the fit plates can be removed and the
parts can transported to the pre-assembly hall.

Figure 4-4: Left: a stub fitted to a leg, right: a circular weld of two pipes
For a circular weld a drawing of a circular weld is shown in figure 4-4, on the right side.
For the circular weld no ground layer is needed, because, after fitting the pipes, they can
immediately be welded together. Here the weld can be filled, for every connection there is
another weld volume required, depending on the diameter of the pipes, the angle and the wall
thickness.
4-4-2 Welding
Welding consists of ’ground layer’ and ’filling’ welding. Ground layer welding is the first layer
which causes that the two components stick together. Filling welding is the filling of the rest
of the weld, therefore it gets its strength. For the production of a jacket there are two main
welding principles: circular and branch welding. Depending on the connection which has to
be made the kind of welding is determined.
Branch Welding is used when two pipes are needed to be welded at a certain angle to each
other. In the past mainly branch welds were executed by welding crosses onto legs. There
could be welded only from the outside, in contrast with the stubs.
Circular Welding is used when two pipes are perpendicular weld to each other. For long pipes
a V-shaped butt weld is used, because only welding from the outside is possible. The short
pipes can be welded from the outside and also be welded from the inside, by using a double
V butt weld. The pipes with the welding from the inside and outside have a lower fatigue
than with only a weld on the outside. The filling of a weld takes about 70% of the time. The
filling of one weld, for a stub connecting to a leg, can take up to 330 welding hours [22].
4-5 Material flow
In the production system the main flow of materials are pipes from steel delivered in different
sizes. Other materials which go through the production system are anodes, pile sleeves, piles,
J-tubes, ladders, conductor pipes etcetera. The material flow is somehow changing in the
process, because at first the material flow are pipes, but after the assembly the jacket is built.
There can be concluded that the main material flow consists of pipes and it during the process
pipes are batched up and becoming bigger parts, ending with a jacket.

4-6 Logistic flow 37
4-6 Logistic flow
The logistic flow consists of all the processes for the production. In this section all the different
processes in the production system are explained in the right sequence as presented in figure
4-3. The processes are: pre-fabrication, pre-assembly, blasting & painting, pre-outfitting and
assembly.
4-6-1 Pre-fabrication
The pre-fabrication is the process where all kind of smaller parts also needed for the jacket
are prepared, like cutting, rolling, pressing, fitting, welding, stress relieving on such items as
welded tubular, beams, nodes, girders, cones, supports and clamps. Also some plates which
were not yet formed to a pipe, are rolled in the pre-fabrication.
4-6-2 Pre-assembly
The pre-assembly can be divided into three activities: fitting, ground-layer welding and filling
welding. In the pre-assembly hall the sub-parts are transported with a multi-wheeler to their
designated location in the hall. Subsequently the parts are fitted to each other, with the use
of an overhead crane. In figure 4-5 a pre-assembly hall is shown with next to it a jacket.
Example pre-assembly process of crosses:
1. Pre-assembly of crosses
• fit and weld stubs

• fit and weld anodes
2. Painting of pre-assembled crosses

3. Pre-assembly of complete cross.
4. Painting of pre-assembled crosses
Figure 4-5: The pre-assembly hall next to a jacket

4-6-3 Blasting & painting
After the fitting and welding of the stubs onto the legs and fitting and welding the crosses,
they go to the blasting & painting shop. All the rust is blasted away, therefore creating a
smooth steel surface where the paint will stick onto. Blasting is with sand, salt of grid which
is send at a high velocity to the pipes to clean the area of the pipes. After blasting the pipe
will be painted. This is done three times to get a layer which will withhold the salt water
from erosion of the steel. After every layer of painting it has to dry 24 hours. Depending of
the area that has to be blasted and painted the duration can be determined.
4-6-4 Pre-outfitting
In the pre-outfitting all kind of parts that could not be put on the pre-assembly parts, because
of transport and/or for the blasting & painting process, are assembled.
4-6-5 Assembly
In this process the painted parts are transported outside onto the yard. This is where the
assembling of the jacket starts. The four leg parts are fitted and welded together, like in the
pre-assembly process, and the whole jacket is built outside on the yard. After this process is
finished the last spots on the jacket are painted up, because the places where is fitted and
welded are not blasted and painted yet.
4-7 Resource Flow
Figure 4-6: Left to right: Multi-wheeler, Overhead crane, Crane
To get the pipes over the yard transport is needed, therefore multiple resources are needed.
The most pipes weigh about 5.000 ton in the current system. Currently the materials are
transported over the yard by the use of multi-wheelers. In the halls is mostly worked with
overhead cranes which transport the pipes to the right places. To assemble the jacket a big
crane is used, to hold the sub-assembly in the right position. Other resources that need to
be obtained are mostly employees: operators, fitters, welders and painters. Then for the
fitting, welding and blasting & painting there are needed: fitting plates, welding equipment
and blasting & painting equipment.

4-8 Bottlenecks 39
4-8 Bottlenecks
The bottlenecks are founded by using the lean wastes: transport, inventory, motion, waiting,
over-processing, over production and defects. By knowing the possible wastes, three bottle-
necks, which create the most problems in the flow of building the jacket, are found. These
problems are: the supply of the materials, the blasting & painting of the jackets and the
welding process. The transport is not a big issue in the production system, because much of
the processes are executed at on place, because of the weigh of the parts.
The supply of the materials is an issue because of the supplier of the metal pipes. HFG is not
a big purchaser of their product, therefore the supplier does not always stick to their delivery
plan and the material is not on time at the yard.
The blasting and painting is a time consuming process, because the jacket or parts have to be
blasted and painted three times and secondly is the drying time approximately one day. An
option to optimize the blasting and painting is to purchase an automated painting installation
or change the order of processes in the production line.
The welding process is the most time-consuming process in the production process. The filling
of the welds takes the most time, because it is a large welding volume and the welders are
welding with a speed of 0.6 kg/hr. Therefore automation can be a solution to fasten up the
welding process.
4-9 Current capacity

Before a new production line is designed, the current production line is checked if it is maybe
already good enough to manage about 50 jackets per year. If this is the case the current
production line can be used to produce the offshore wind turbine jackets.
A rough approximation could be to compare the planning of a jacket and take the time and
divide it by the weight of the offshore wind turbine jacket. In Appendix ?? the schedule of
two projects are put and there can be notified that multiple tasks are done parallel during
the production of a jacket. The first schedule is of the jacket Oseberg, weight: 4.400 ton, the
fitting and welding of certain stubs and blasting & painting is done parallel. In table 4-1 is
shown the weight of the jackets, the time needed to produce the jacket and the ratio between
the weight and the makespan.
Table 4-1: Different Jacket Productions
Weight (ton) Production time (days) Rate

Hejre 8500 384 22.1
Gina Krog 8100 408 19.9
Culzean Maersk 6800 350 19.4
Oseberg 4400 202 21.8
Clipper South 2300 192 12.0
Breagh Alpha 1290 144 9.0
weight(ton)
rate = (4-1)
time(days)

The rate is determined to compare the production time of multiple jacket in the current
production system with the offshore wind turbine jacket in the current situation. When 50
jackets of approximately 1.000 ton are build with a ratio of 9.0: this will take 5555.5 days.
This is equal to about 15.2 years, which is way too long to build 50 wind turbine jackets,
therefore a new production line should be designed with a new jacket design.
4-10 KPIs
There are two main KPIs defined based on the interests of the customer and HFG: the
makespan of 50 jackets and the costs. HFG does a proposal to their customer about the costs
and makespan and the customer agrees or disagrees, depending on their requirements. It is
hard to say how long the current production is, but a rough estimation based on the Breagh
Alpha, shown in table 4-1, would be approximately 144 days. 50 jackets of Breagh Alpha
would take 7.200 days, which is similar to about 576.000 hours. The employees will work in
2 shifts of 40 hours/week, which is similar to 4.160 hours in one year. In consultation with
the customer, HFG delivers a final plan and design for the jacket. The costs for one jacket is
at Bilfinger Mars Offshore (BMO) currently about 3 million euro, including piles, transition
piece etc.
The makespan: the time from when the operation begins to the point of time at which
the operation ends. In this case the operation is the entire production process of the jackets.
The makespan depends on a lot of different aspects: such as the size, the requirements of the
customer, the number of welds, the delivery time of the steel etc.
The costs: the costs of the production of a jacket is the second KPI which takes an important
role in designing a production line. The costs includes the investments of equipment, the extra
area needed for the production, material prices, production times and prices.
4-11 Conclusion
All the processes of the current system are analyzed and mapped, therefore an overview of all
the processes is created. The current production line cannot be used for a batch production
of 50 jackets per year, therefore a new production line has to be designed. The main processes
and activities are clarified in the different sections and the current KPIs are mentioned.

Chapter 5
Design of Production Line and Jacket
Section 5-1 presents the assumptions for the design of the new production line. In section
5-2 the reason why the batch production is based on a pull market is described. Section 5-3
describes the different aspects which can be changed in the system to design a more optimized
production system.
Section 5-4 defines the material flow through the production system and exemplifies what
this flow contains. The design of the jacket and the different assembly methods for the jacket
also will be discussed in this section. In section 5-5 the flow of the resources is discussed: the
employees and the production and transport equipment are described. Section 5-6 presents
the logistic flow of the jacket in the production process.
Section 5-7 shows the different design concepts, based on a morphological overview with the
different choices for each activity in the production system. Section 5-8 shows the product
wheel of the production process. Section 5-9 lists the different ways of data collection and the
kinds of data which are collected. Section 5-10 defines the different kinds of Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) and describes how to determine these KPIs. Finally in section 5-11 a
conclusion is drawn about the design of the new production line.
5-1 Assumptions
For the design of the production line and the assembly and building methods multiple as-
sumptions have been made to simplify the design of the production line.
• As mentioned before that the pre-fabrication and pre-outfitting are two processes in the
production, but these two processes are less important for the production of a jacket for
offshore wind turbines and thereby not included into the design of the production line.
• When material is needed on the yard it will be available, therefore the supply of the
materials will not be a bottleneck anymore.

42 Design of Production Line and Jacket
• The cutting and rolling of plates is assumed as already done, this will shorten the
makespan of the jackets.
• One standardized jacket design is used, the assembly and building method are deter-
mined in section 5-4.
• For the design of the production line only the pipes are taken into account, with which
the main construction of the jacket is built. The piles, anodes, transition piece and the
extra attributes needed for the jackets are left out to simplify the production process.
The consequence is that the production times are not representative for the production
of one entire jacket.
• For the calculations of the welding volumes a bevel angle of 45 degrees and a root gap
of 6.5 mm are assumed for each weld.
• The blasting & painting is not sorted out for the production, thereby the blasting &
painting will get a stochastic time determined on field experience.
5-2 Market
The wind farm market in which the production line will exist will be a pull market. The
customer asks for a certain amount of wind turbine foundations and the company produces
this number of foundations. The production line will be a pull market, because it produces
a very specific product and not every customer will want to purchase this product. It is also
a very costly product, therefore Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG) does not want to have a
lot of jackets in storage. The effect of this pull market is that a batch production is created:
on request of the customer the right amount of jackets are produced in one batch. In this
research it is assumed that 50 jackets have to be produced in one year.
5-3 Changes in production process
Multiple aspects will change in the design of the new production system:
• A standardized design of the jacket will be used for one batch production of 50 jackets.
• The weight will be scaled down about 14 times.
• Instead of producing one jacket per year, approximately 50 jackets will be produced in
one year.
The processes discussed for the current production process, defined in chapter 4, have to be
completed by the new production line. In the production process multiple aspects of the
logistic, resource and material flow, can be changed to improve the process. These aspects
will be discussed in this section for every flow, and the main reason to decide about each
choice will be motivated. The aspects which can be changed from the current situation:
1. Material Flow
(a) The building methods of the jacket

5-4 Material flow 43
(b) The assembly methods of the jacket

2. Resource Flow
(a) Automation of the resources
(b) Removal of resources
3. Logistic Flow
(a) The order of the processes
(b) Parallel processes
(c) Size of the area
5-4 Material flow
For the material flow the design of the jacket is the most important factor: knowing the weight
of the jacket, the consisting parts of the jackets, in which order these parts come together
and how they will be assembled.
5-4-1 Design of the jacket
The design of the jacket has influence on the construction of the jacket, such as which parts
are needed for the production of a jacket. In chapter 2 the choice off the kind of jacket is has
been made by using the market, their characteristics and talking with jacket design experts.
The three-legged jacket came forward as best option for offshore wind turbine production.
Subsequently the jacket engineering department gave an approved design for this research. In
appendix B the detailed drawings are added with the exact dimensions. With this information,
wall thickness and the welding angle of the pipes, the exact fitting and welding times of the
jacket can be calculated.
5-4-2 Building of the jacket
After brainstorming with engineers and experts from HFG three main building methods are
determined. The main differences is the welding: with stubs or point-to-point, also mentioned
in section 4-2.
Building method A, without stubs and presented in figure 5-1, shows that for every bracing 6
welds are needed. Only branch welds are needed: in total 96 for one jacket. This construction
will also be the heaviest one of the three different building methods. For building method
B stubs are used on both sides of the legs and one long pipe in the middle for one side of
the bracing. 96 branch welds and 96 circular welds will be needed for the crosses and the
connection to the legs. For building method C the most welds are needed, but method C also
yields the most material savings. The overview of each building method and the number of
welds needed and the material savings are shown in table 5-1. An important question is if
these material savings will outweigh the extra weldings. The material savings of the different
designs are based on the designs and the calculations of the company BMO Bilfinger shown
in section 3-7-6 and to the opinion of a jacket engineer from HFG.

Figure 5-1: Left to right: building method A, B and C
Table 5-1: Number of weldings needed and material savings
# Circular welds Material

# Branch welds # Circular welds
for the legs Savings (%)
building method A 96 0 0 0
building method B 96 96 30 4
building method C 96 126 30 5
Assembly methods
The sequence in which the assembly process is performed is defined by the assembly method.
For building method A three different assembly methods are defined. By experimenting with
these different assembly methods, one method will be the best possibility to assemble the
jacket. This assembly method will be applied to each building method.
The assembly process consists of almost the same activities as the pre-assembly process, but
after finishing the welds with the right parts the created construction have to be repositioned.
Subsequently, the parts for the next step can enter the assembly in the right parts and order.
Each assembly method introduces a different product wheel, therefore the parts have to be
transported in different sequences to the assembly.
The three ways to assemble: A1, A2 and A3, are defined in figure 5-2, it shows a front and
top view of the construction. The robots are standing for A2 ans A3 on both sides. The
different steps in the assembly are divided in 3 or 4 main steps. In step 1 the crosses are
fitted and welded to the two legs or one leg. This forms the basis of the jacket, in every step
is shown what is added to the assembly process and which welds are done in red.

5-5 Resource flow 45
Figure 5-2: The different assembly methods for building method A
5-5 Resource flow
Different resources are needed for activities, such as fitting, welding, transport and blasting
& painting equipment. In the assumptions the blasting & painting is omitted from the
process, only a stochastic time and the number of resources is determined for the process.
The same equipment is used as in the current situation for blasting & painting. Another kind
of resource is the number of employees which are required for the different sub-processes. It
is important to know when which resource must be summoned in the process so that the
amount of equipment can be narrowed down. The number of employees can be decreased
with the degree of automation in each process.
5-5-1 Automation
Automation can be done for the different activities of the production line for a jacket. The
different ways of automation are discussed in this section with their pro’s and cons. The
investment and maintenance costs are a big con of automation. For every process that can
be automated, the consideration is made whether the way of automation is cost efficient for
the production line.

Fitting
For the fitting process of circular and branch welds there are no current ways of automation
available. Other ways to accelerate the process are the use of a fit-clamp for the circular weld
and a mold for the branch weld.
Fit clamps
The fit-clamp is currently used manually. At the Heerema Innovation Center (HIC) a fit-
clamp is being developed which can automatically fit the pipes to each other and also a
welding robot which can automatically weld. In figure 5-3 a manual fit-clamp is shown; it
takes approximately 20 minutes from start to finish to fit the joint (gap, hi-low and fine-tuned)
for two pipes with a diameter of approximately 1.2 meters [23].
Figure 5-3: Fit Clamp on 49 inch x 0.625 weld pipe
Fit molds
When a lot of the pipes have the same diameter a fit mold can be used. A fit mold is in the
shape of the pipe, the pipe is laid down in the fit mold in the right angle and in the right
fitting position. The fitting time is decreased with about 30% by using the fitting mold. This
can be used for branch and as well for circular welds.
Welding
As for the welds, circular welds and branch welds are defined. A circular weld has other
dimensions and a different technique of welding than a branch weld. For the use of welding
robots a manipulator can be used which positions the pipe very accurately in the right place.
A manipulator is a unit which put the workpiece in the right position; the maximum weight
of the workpiece can be 35 ton. For branch welding a jacket a manipulator cannot be used,
because the workpiece is too large and weighs too much. Therefore the test formation,
which is currently used at HIC for the development of welding with a welding robot without
manipulator, can be used for these branch welds, the robot will weld around the pipe with
two robots.
For stub welds a welding robot can be used, which can maneuver around the pipe to weld.
This is currently being developed at the HIC. For large work pieces a manipulator cannot be
used, therefore this welding robot is being developed, called the cater pillar formation. For
circular welding the automation will be that on a fit-clamp, a circular welding robot will be
fastened which will go around the pipe.

5-6 The logistic flow 47
5-5-2 Minimizing transport
For the production line is known that the transport should be minimized as much as possible
for a batch production [10]. There are two main ways of transportation: the transport of the
materials and the transport of the resources. Both of these possibilities will be analyzed for
the design of the production line. It will mainly be the difference between a line and bench
assembly.
5-6 The logistic flow
5-6-1 Sequence of processes
By looking at similar cases of processes the possible changes in the sequence of the processes
can be determined. The activities for the processes, mentioned in chapter 4: the activities
in the pre-assembly, blasting & painting and assembly, cannot be changed in sequence. But
the order of these processes can be changed. In chapter 2 appears that in the automotive
industry and at multiple similar companies, such as Bilfinger Mars Offshore (BMO) [3-7] the
blasting & painting process of the workpiece/jacket takes place after it is totally assembled.
The advantage of blast and painting at the end is that the jacket is finished and no paint-up
is needed. A disadvantage is the fact that the entire jacket is in use for blasting & painting,
but keep in mind that the next jacket can already be build.
From the literature is defined that the pre-assembly is a mixed-model assembly line where
different products are produced through each other. While the assembly is a single-model
assembly line. By knowing these differences, this can be taken along in the design process.
5-6-2 Area of the processes
An important aspect of re-engineering assembly lines is workspace optimization. All the

unnecessary items are removed from the assembly line, thereby thinking about unnecessary
motions, tools and transportation [10].
For each process and activity area on the yard is needed, in the schedule the right amount
of area is provided. Secondly in the current system of one-off production the assembly takes
place outside the halls. The other processes take place in different halls which already are
built at the yard. For the design of the production line the area must be observed and kept
in mind. In case that the maximum available area is exceeded, costs for extra needed area
must be charged.
5-7 Design Concepts
To determine the process design concept(s), a morphological overview is determined. The

different options for every activity in the production process are shown in table 5-2. Looking
at the current system and his capacity, shown in section 4-9, there can be concluded that the
current system where every activity is executed manually is too slow. Therefore the option

to automate an activity is a good way to speed up the makespan of the production system.
From the resource flow point of view multiple options are given to automate the production
system and used for the morphological overview.
Table 5-2: Morphological overview
Activity Sub-activity Solution 1 Solution 2 Solution 3

Transport - Overhead cranes Multi-wheeler Rollers
Fitting Circular Fit plates Fit-clamp
Branch Fit plates Mold fitting
Welding Circular Manual Circular welding robot
Branch Manual Branch welding robot
Blasting & painting - Manual Robot
From the morphological overview one main design concept is chosen: all the activities are
automated. For this design concept is looked at the possibilities in the sequence of the
processes. Two main different concepts are defined: one line assembly with the blasting &
painting at the end of the production line and one line assembly with the blasting & painting
as in the current situation: after the prefabrication. The idea of the blasting & painting
in the end is inspired by the company BMO Bilifinger [3-7-6] and the automotive industry
[3-7-2]. Another option for a design concept could be a production line with the principle
bench assembly, every resource is brought to the materials. The jacket will be build in one
place. After discussing this possibility, it is not used as possible design concept, because the
flow of the processes would be too low.
From the material flow is the jacket design defined for the production line. Subsequently
three building methods are determined for the jacket which can be compared.
5-7-1 Design concept 1: pre-assembly, assembly and blasting & painting process
Figure 5-4: Design concept 1: The pre-assembly, assembly and blasting & painting process

5-8 Product wheel 49
The first design concept will be a line assembly shown in figure 5-4, already mentioned in
section 3-3. The pipes are transported to area 1, depending on the kind of assembly method
the stubs and leg-parts do also need to be transported. The crosses are fitted and welded, if
stubs and leg-parts are present, they are also fitted and welded. After the pre-assembly, crosses
and sometimes stubs and leg-parts, the legs and the pre-assembled parts are transported to
area 2 and are fitted and welded to each other in the right order. After the total assembly
of the jacket, it is transported to the last area where the blasting & painting takes place. A
trade-off is made to do the blasting & painting in area 2, but due to the fact that the jacket
must be painted three times and need to be drying in between for 24 hours, this is too much
delay in the process. In the design concept the next jacket can already be build when the
previous jacket is blasted and painted.
5-7-2 Design concept 2: pre-assembly, blasting & painting and assembly
Design concept 2 is shown in figure 5-5. The difference with design concept 1 is that in concept
2 the order of the processes is different. After the pre-assembly the parts will be blasted and
painted, instead of after the assembly process. The crosses and stubs are produced by fitting
and welding. Secondly, the prefabrication parts and the legs/leg parts are transported to a
separate area where all the different parts are blasted and painted. After all the parts are
painted they will be transported to area 2 where the assembly takes place. When the jacket
is produced it will be put in storage or assuming that the jacket is no longer in the system
and no space is taken by the jacket.
Figure 5-5: Design concept 2: Pre-assembly, blasting & painting and assembly process
5-8 Product wheel
The product wheel of the jacket is determined, presented in figure 5-6. In the outer circle
are the crosses presented in blue, this is also part 1 mentioned in section ??. The crosses are

produced in part 1 and for some building methods the stubs are welded to the leg parts. Five
crosses are needed to produce part 2: one leg with 5 crosses and one pipe.
Figure 5-6: The Product wheel of the jacket
The product wheel is used to define the sequence of the parts to enter the conceptual and
simulation model. The order, based on the product wheel, will be different for the different
building and assembly methods, discussed in chapter 6, likewise it defines the import file for
the conceptual and simulation model. The takt time for the design concepts is described in
Appendix C, together with the working shifts.
5-9 Data collection
For gathering the data different methods are used: using existing data or gathering own
data. There are basically five different ways to create research data:observation, simulation,
experimental, by data processing and source research. In an earlier research, information is
gathered for the fitting process, these data will be used for this study as well.
For the welding process the volume of the weld must be calculated for each connection,
the weight of the weld can be calculated. Subsequently, depending on the velocity of the
welder/welding robot in kg/hr the welding time can be calculated. These velocities are based
on information of experts at the field of welding robots and welders.
5-9-1 Fitting
To determine the fit hours, the current fit hours for the circular and branch welds are exam-
ined. After talking to several employees and doing research for the fit clamp the results for
fitting hours are presented in table 5-3.
Table 5-3: Fitting Methods
Mean Time Standard deviation

Costs[euro/hr]
[hrs] [hrs]
Manual branch fitting 12 4 50
Manual circular fitting 6 2 50
Circular fit-clamp 1 0.33 60
Branch fitting mold 3 1.5 60

5-10 Key Performance Indicators 51
5-9-2 Welding
For manual welding the velocity is 0.6 kg/hr, for the welding robot. For branch welding this
is 3,5 kg/hr and a robot for circular welds will weld with a velocity of 6 kg/hr. Another
pro of using a welding robot is the volume of the circular weld which can be decreased with
50 percent, because the circular weld robot can weld with a much smaller bevel angle than
a manual welder. In table 5-4 the different welding methods are presented with velocity,
standard deviation of the velocity and decrease of volume weld if used.
HFG provides Excel Sheets which are used to calculate the welding volumes needed for the
pipes. These sheets will be used for this study to determine the welding volumes for the wind
turbine jacket.
Table 5-4: Welding Methods
Mean velocity Standard deviation Decrease volume

[kg/hr] [kg/hr] weld [%]
manual welding 0.6 0.2 0
branch welding robot 3.5 0.5 0
circular welding robot 6 1.5 50
5-10 Key Performance Indicators
The previously defined KPIs are also valid for the new production line. Based on the two
concepts for the production line and the different building methods the KPIs are compared
to determine which production line and which building method satisfies the KPIs the best
and is thereby the best solution for a new production line.
5-10-1 Makespan
The first KPI is the makespan, which can be determined by knowing that the yearly produc-
tion of jackets will be 50. The makespan will be the running time of the model, therefore it
will be easy to notify. The makespan should be approximately a year, whereby the number
of hours in one year will be defined in chapter 7.
5-10-2 Costs
The second KPI are the costs, this will be determined from an economic view. The main
costs are the man hours, the purchase of the welding robots and the material costs of the
jackets. In general the material costs will be the same for the different building methods,
except when the material savings mentioned in section 5-4 are practiced. After talking and
gathering information from a senior business analyst from HFG, the price distribution of a
jacket determined shown in figure 5-7. The price for the material can be calculated based on
the weight of the jacket and knowing that the price for steel is: 2.5 euro/kg. the costs for the
jacket are defined in table 5-5.

Figure 5-7: The distribution of the costs for a jacket
Table 5-5: The material costs for a jacket
Weight [kg] Price/kg [euro/kg] Price 1 jacket [euro]

1 jacket 501097 2.5 1.252.742,5
50 jackets 25.054.850 2.5 62.637.125
5-11 Conclusion
The import assumptions for the design concepts are defined, secondly the changes for the
production process are defined. With knowing these changes the material, resource and
logistic flow are run through, to define where changes can be made. The material flow defines
the design of the jacket, with this design three different building methods building methods
are defined for the jacket design. For building method A three different assembly methods are
devised. The resource flow looks at different automation opportunities and where to decrease
or remove resources in the production system.
With these options known a morphological overview is created with the different activities in
the production system. From this morphological overview one main design concept is defined,
where the most processes are automated and/or improved. Two different design concepts are
the result, with keeping the logistic flow in mind a second design concept is defined with a
different logistical sequence. The blasting & painting is put after the prefabrication process
and before the assembly process.
In the following chapters the different building and assembly methods and the two process
design concepts are experimented for the defined KPIs. The best process design concept,
building method and assembly method come from these experiments.

Chapter 6
Modeling
Based on the current analysis in chapter 4 and the analysis of the design of the production line
and jackets in chapter 5, different designs are created. To evaluate these different designs it is
necessary to create a model. A discrete even model is built in combination with a calculation
model to determine the best design based on the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
At first the two models and their relation are described in section 6-1. The simulation model
is described at first, followed by the calculation model. The assumptions for the simulation
model are mentioned in section 6-2. Then the input and output variables for the simulation
model are described in section 6-3. Consecutive the description of the conceptual model for the
simulation model is given in section 6-4. To use the conceptual model for the simulation model
it has to be implemented, which is described in section 6-5. In section 6-6 the verification
and validation of simulation model is done.
For the calculation model assumptions are made, discussed in section 6-7. Also the input
and output variables of the calculation model are numerated is section 6-8, followed op to the
description of the calculation model in section 6-9.
6-1 Overview model
Figure 6-1: The overview of the simulation and calculation model

54 Modeling
In figure 6-1 the input and output variables of the simulation and calculation model are
shown. The given input variables can change the behavior of the simulation model, thereby
changing the output variables. For the simulation model three different input variables are
used: the type of jacket, the demand and the configuration parameters. From the simulation
the makespan is calculated and the operative performance is used as input together with
configuration parameters for the calculation model to calculate the costs. By using these two
models the KPI, makespan and costs, for the concepts can be evaluated.
6-2 Assumptions for the simulation model
For the simulation model assumptions are made, because the model cannot represent the real
production line completely. By making these assumptions the simulation model will come
close to reality. The following assumptions are made:
• The model has to run every process step defined in chapter 5.

• The non-destructive testing of the welds is neglected, assuming that the robot will only
weld correctly.
• The failure of the equipment is neglected.
• The fitting is not checked if is done correctly, assuming the fitting is done right with fit
molds and the fit clamp.
• The pre-welding of a weld is neglected in all cases.
• Up to four welding robots can work on the pre-assembly and assembly, because there
is a restriction of welding robots, in connection with the investment costs and lack of
space.
• The existing halls at the yard in Vlissingen can be used for the production line.
• The legs of building method A are arriving in one piece: assuming that the legs are
already welded to each other. Only the crosses have to be welded to the legs.
• The model is working on a First-in First-out order.
6-3 Input and output variables of the simulation model
As mentioned earlier, three input variables are important. In this section these input variables
of the simulation model will be discussed. In subsection 6-3-1 the variables for the type of
jacket are mentioned. Secondly, in subsection 6-3-2 the demand will be explained and in
subsection 6-3-3 the different configuration parameters are illustrated. In subsection 6-3-
4 the output variable operative performance is discussed. Finally in subsection 6-3-5 the
makespan, the first KPI, is shortly described.
6-3-1 Type of jacket
The input file for the simulation jacket is an excel file which represents the flow of parts to
the model. The jacket is divided into parts: legs, stubs and crosses. Each part has the right

6-3 Input and output variables of the simulation model 55
fit and welding hours and the relationship to the other parts is indicated. An example of one
of the excel files, which is an input file, is put in Appendix H. By changing the type of jacket,
the parts needed to build the jacket will change and therefore the input file. Also the building
and assembly method of the jacket is determined and added to the input file.
6-3-2 Demand
The demand is the number of jackets in one batch produced. The customer can define this
number of jackets. For this research the number of jackets that are produced in one batch is
50.
6-3-3 Configuration parameters
The input variables for the conceptual model are divided in four different categories: equip-
ment, the area, the employees and the process times.
(1) Equipment variables:
• Number of fit-clamps: the fit clamps are only used for the circular welds, for the fitting
and welding of the welds. The speed of welding will be rounded to 6 kg/hr.
• Number of branch welding robots: the welding robots will be used for the branch welds,
the fitting is done separately by fitters. The speed of the welding will be rounded to 3.5
kg/hr.
• Number of cranes: For the transport between the part from the pre-assembly to the
multi-wheeler cranes are needed. The time of this transport is around 4 hours.
• Number of multi-wheelers: For transport between the pre-assembly and the assembly
multi-wheelers are needed. A multi-wheeler can move one part at a time. The time to
move a part from the pre-assembly to the assembly is about 3 hours.
(2) Area Variables:
• Number of workplaces in the pre-assembly: at every workplace there can be fitted and
welded. The welding robots have access to every workplace that is defined.
• Number of workplaces in the assembly: the locations at the assembly depends on the
building method of the jacket. The number of workplaces for the assembly does not
change the area needed for the assembly. The jacket stays the same size and everything
has to be build in the assembly.
• Size of the buffer between the pre-assembly and the assembly: for every extra buffer
place, there is more area needed. The same buffer area is reserved for crosses and stubs.
• Locations: every part has a specific location for the assembly which is defined for each
part. If the location is occupied the part has to wait in the buffer until the locations of
the step are released.

56 Modeling
• Step: every part belongs to different step for the assembly, this defines when parts have
to be batched and turned. After turning the locations are given free en the new parts
for the next step can be transported to their defined location. After accomplishing all
the steps the jacket is finished and it can be send to the blasting & painting.
(3) Employees variables:
• Number of fitters: the fitters are needed for the branch welds in the pre-assembly and
assembly. When one fitter is assigned to the tasks, two fitters will go to the task because
they always work in pairs. The fit-clamps also need fitters for the fitting part.
• Number of pre-welders: before the branch weld can be welded by the robot, the weld is
pre-welded, this will take about 2 hours.
• Number of operators: for the welding robots there is an operator needed which keeps
track of the robots.
• The maximum number of equipment or employees: this number is different for each
specific task, for example when a part has two welds two welding robots can work on
that part.
(4) Process time variables:
• Stochastic process times for branch fitting: the process times are determined on the
basis of normal fitting times. But keeping in mind that there will be used a mold to fit
the pipes the fitting is decreased by a certain amount of hours.
• Stochastic process time for branch welding: the welding volume for every part is deter-
mined with a standard and dependent on the speed (in kg/hr) of the equipment and
the amount of robots working on the welds the welding time is calculated.
• Stochastic process time for circular fitting: the process time for circular fitting is deter-
mined by testing the fit clamp on pipes, the average fitting time is 20 minutes.
• Stochastic process time for circular welding: the process time for circular welding volume
is calculated with the excel sheets for circular. By knowing the welding speed of the fit
clamps (in kg/hr) and the number of fit-clamps the welding time can be calculated.
6-3-4 Operative Performance
From the simulation model the operative performance is achieved, which are input variables
for the calculation model. These numbers are used to determine the costs of The operative
performance exists of:
• Number of fit clamps

• Number of welding robots
• Number of multi-wheelers
• Number of cranes
• Number of assembly turning systems

6-4 Description of the conceptual model 57
6-3-5 Makespan
The makespan is the time to produce the number of jackets for one batch, defined by the
demand of the customer.
6-4 Description of the conceptual model
Figure 6-2: The process flow chart of both concepts: left is presented concept 1 and on the
right concept 2
The conceptual model is designed to create a lot of flexibility, because thereby it can be used
in a greater perspective. There is flexibility at multiple aspects:
• different kind of welds can be added for the jacket

• the number of jackets can be changed
• different building methods can be used
• the assembly method of the jacket is flexible
• the kind of jacket can be changed
The conceptual model of the production process starts with figure 6-2, the process flow of
the production line with the main tasks on the highest level. The flow in this chart is
the materials, pipes of steel, which is the input of the process flow and the jacket is the
output of the process flow. To clarify the difference between the two design concepts, the two
concepts are presented in figure 6-2. The difference is the order in processes. Subsequently
concentrating on the pre-assembly and the assembly activities.
In figure 6-3 the conceptual model of the pre-assembly process is shown. There is a difference
between the welds in the pre-assembly: for every weld and specific pipe a different production

58 Modeling
time is determined, depending on the number of resources which are put onto the part which
has to be fitted and welded.
In figure 6-5 the assembly process is shown where also different kind of welds have to be fitted
and welded. The pre-assembly and assembly process include both the same tasks, but the
way the parts are constructed are different and for the assembly process specific parts have
to be available. Therefore the assembly process will be put on hold when the pre-assembly
does not deliver the right part for the assembly process.
6-4-1 Pre-assembly process
Figure 6-3: The pre-assembly process
In figure 6-3 every diamond represents a different process step. The branch weld consists of
two steps: fitting and welding. The branch fitting is connected to a resource of fitters, which
is determined by the configuration. Depending on the part the number of fitters can differ,
with knowing the number of fitters ascribed to the part, the fitting time can be calculated.
The dimension of all the activities are hours. For the parts which need circular welds the
resource are fit-clamps. With the fit-clamps both the fitting and the welding is done with the
same equipment. Therefore the fitting and welding will use the same number of fit-clamps.
The time will be still different, because fitting needs less time than welding.
For the building methods the pre-assembly is different, this is also mentioned in chapter 5.
Building method A, with point-to-point welds, builds less parts in the pre-assembly than
building method B and C, which uses stubs. The main process stays the same, the concep-
tual model of the pre-assembly is created in such a way that every build-up method can be
produced. At first the material gets a place at the pre-assembly, secondly checking if the part

6-4 Description of the conceptual model 59
Figure 6-4: The different pre-assembly for every building method
needs a branch weld. If so, then the branch weld is done, subsequently checking for a circular
weld. If the part is finished the place is released, a new part can take that place.
The part produced in the pre-assembly is transported in a buffer and in the case of design
concept 2 immediately blasted and painted. The part will be transported to the assembly
process when needed. In figure 6-4 the different parts which have to be produced in the
pre-assembly are shown for every building method for the jacket.
6-4-2 Assembly process
Figure 6-5: Assembly Process Flow Chart
The assembly process consists of almost the same process steps as the pre-assembly for branch
and circular welds. Differences are the waiting on the right parts for the assembly and the
turning of the workpiece after the first assembly step, subsequently releasing the places for
the next step in the assembly process.
6-4-3 Blasting & Painting
The blasting & painting area is placed in one hall. The process is defined as one stochastic
process time. In figure 6-6 the process flow chart of the blasting & painting is displayed.

60 Modeling
Figure 6-6: Blasting, painting and drying Process Flow Chart
6-5 Implementation of the conceptual model
To implement the conceptual model into a simulation model, the main flow charts of the
conceptual model are used. The simulation is built in the program FlexSim, this software is
mainly used because it is supported from Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG). They want to
test if this software could be used in the company for similar problems. Furthermore, FlexSim
is applicable for several specific topics, including the batch production of offshore jackets.
At the simulation model, the ’give place’ and ’release place’ from the flow charts are steps
which have to be passed, but this will not take any time for the simulation running time. By
taking a place a predefined location is entered, another part cannot enter the assembly with
the same location. After the fitting and welding process steps are finished for all parts at the
same step, the next parts can enter after locations are given free.
Every part that enters the simulation model is one row in the input file and information is
put to this part. In the simulation a token is created for every part. Multiple welds can be
associated to the part depending of the part. The simulation model is designed for a First-
In-First-Out (FIFO) mechanism, that means that the parts and jackets enter the same way
as they leave for every activity.
Appendix D shows the simulation model designed in FlexSim for design concept 1. In figure
D-1 the pre-assembly is presented, followed by the buffer and transport between the pre-
assembly and assembly in figure D-2. Subsequently, in figure D-3 the assembly process and
in figure D-4 the blasting, painting and drying. For design concept 2 are some changes made
in the simulation model. The blasting, painting and drying in the end is removed and the
process between the pre-assembly and assembly is changes as shown in figure ??.
6-6 Verification and validation of the simulation model
After modeling the production system in FlexSim, the model has to be debugged, verified and
validated. Verification of the model is to check if the model is correct and the implementation
is done correctly. Validation is whether it is the correct model, checking by comparing the
simulation model results with actual results or with the use of other simulation models which
are already validated [5, 24].
In figure 6-7 the simplified building method of the model development process is shown.
The problem entity is the system, hence the current situation of the production system. The

6-6 Verification and validation of the simulation model 61
conceptual model is in this case the design of the new production line for offshore wind turbine
jackets. The computerized model is the simulation model of the conceptual model [5].
Figure 6-7: Simplified building method of the model development process [5]
6-6-1 Verification
During the verification it is checked whether the conceptual model is implemented in the right
way. This consists mainly of checking whether the model description is correctly executed
and the assumptions are applied [25].
Model description verification
The classification of the model in the description can be checked for the simulation model by
checking the order and which steps are made. For the process steps the verification is done
separately, by comparing the flow chart with the steps in the simulation model done by the
tokens. The explanation of what happens in the simulation model in comparison with the
description of the conceptual model is described in table 6-1.
Assumptions verification
After running the model the most important assumptions mentioned in subsection 6-2 are
verified. To check if all the process steps are completed the simulation model is walked
through step by step for the different building building methods. Every step is checked,
shown in table 6-2 and thereby the model is verified on running through the right process
steps in the simulation model. The verification of the assumptions where process times are
neglected do not need to be verified, because these times are let out of the simulation model.
Computerized model verification
To check the computerized model a walk-through the model is done for one jacket by static
testing: the computer program is analyzed to determine if it is correct by using such techniques

62 Modeling
Table 6-1: Model description verification
Process Process step Description

Every token that needs to go through the
Pre-assembly Give place
pre-assembly gets a random place at the pre-assembly.
Every token which needs a branch weld is at first fitted
Branch weld
and secondly welded, the time calculated is verified.
Every token which needs a circular weld is at first fitted
Circular weld
After the pre-assembly the tokens go in the buffer until the right
Buffer
parts are available for the assembly, this is verified.
Assembly Give place Every token is assigned to their designated place.
Every token which needs a branch weld is at first fitted
Branch weld
Every token which needs a circular weld is at first fitted
Circular weld
When the right parts are fitted and welded, the entire
Turning
workpiece is turned as verified in the simulation model.
The blasting & painting is a
Painting -
variable which is executed a stochastic time.
as structured walk-through, correctness proofs and examination of the structure properties.

The simulation model is checked step by step, and all the process are run through correctly.
Secondly all the calculations within the processes are manually checked, and they are correct.
6-6-2 Validation
For checking the validation of the simulation model multiple methods can be applied. The
model is checked on three methods: data validity, conceptual model validity and operational
validity. The other methods cannot be applied on this subject.
Data validity
For the data input and output data is available. The input data for this research is gathered
on different ways: calculated, estimated and by talking to experts. For the input different
data has to be collected: transport, fitting, welding, blasting & painting data.
The transport data is collected by gathering information from the yard, like how long a multi-
wheeler needs to transport a part to the assembly process. By disaggregation of the data the
data is more accurately for the model.
The fitting hours are based on talking to experts and from a earlier research done by R. van
Genderen [22].
The welding hours are collected by calculating the welding volume, by using excel calculation
sheets created by a welding expert from HFG. Secondly the welding time can be calculated
with the welding speed of the concerned welding equipment.

6-6 Verification and validation of the simulation model 63
Table 6-2: The different building methods verified for walking through the right process steps in
the simulation model
Activity Activity step building method A1 building method B building method C

pre-assembly Branch fitting x x x
Branch welding x x x
Circular fitting x x
Circular welding x x
Transport Multi-wheeler x x x
Assembly Branch fitting x
Branch welding x
Circular fitting x x
Circular welding x x
Transport Multi-wheeler x x x
BPD x x x
Table 6-3: Data validation
validation
transport data estimation experts
fitting data experts -
welding data calculation -
blasting & painting data estimation experts
Conceptual model validation
Conceptual model validation is to determine that the theories and assumptions underlying the
conceptual model are correct for the purpose of the model. Also the model’s representation of
the problem entity and the model’s structure logic and mathematical and causal relationships
should be ’reasonable’ [25]. In this model the first-in first-out (FIFO) method is used, this
is mainly done by the order of the input file for the simulation model. By knowing in which
order the jackets will be produced the FIFO method can be checked. This is done and the
order of the simulation model is FIFO.
Operational validity
The output of the simulation should be checked on accuracy for the purpose of the model
over the domain of the model’s intended applicability. For the operational validity different
validation techniques are used for this research: ’comparison to other models’, ’face validity’
and ’historical data validation’.
The simulation model will be compared to a simulation model, from R. van Genderen, which
only looked at high detail to the fitting and welding process of a leg with stubs. The same
leg with the stubs and the same dimensions and variables are used as input for both the
simulation models. By running these experiments, shown in table 6-4, some conclusion of
the operational validation can be drawn. The output variable, the makespan, of the two
simulation models is compared to check the validity of the simulation model.

64 Modeling
Table 6-4: Comparison
makespan [days] # places # fitters # welders # robots

Sim model 81 6 12 14 1
Model [22] 116 6 12 0 1
Sim model 42 6 12 14 2
Model [22] 60 6 12 0 2
The main difference between the two models is the level of detail, in the model of R. van
Genderen [22] the robot, which produces legs with stubs, is focused on the current production
process, with NDT, manual welding and a lot of check points. By knowing the differences
in the models for two different scenario’s the difference in the makespan can be analyzed For
both scenario’s the percent decrease from the model of R. van Genderen [22] in comparison
to the designed simulation model in this study is approximately 30%. This difference can be
justified with the lower level of detail of this study, process times are neglected. Secondly in
this research is looked at an optimal way for the batch production, therefore the makespan
will be faster than in the current simulation model. The difference in makespan is 30% which
is acceptable by the fact that the simulation model is optimized and simplified.
For the ’face validity’ the focus is on the cycle time of the simulation model with different
input variables. To check the face validity, together with employees of HFG, the makespan of
the most transparent configuration is analyzed Producing one jacket with as input variable
one welding robot for the pre-assembly and one for the assembly process, because with one
robot the welding can not be performed parallel in the pre-assembly or assembly. This makes
it easier to check the makespan on validity. In table 6-5 the different building methods for
building method A are checked on validity. The most time of producing is the welding at the
assembly which has to be done by one robot plus the time of the blasting & painting, when
this is lower than the total makespan the model is face validated. In all the building methods
of A this is the case and thereby the face validity can be guaranteed.
Table 6-5: building method A
PF_FT [hrs] PF_WT [hrs] A_FT [hrs] A_WT [hrs] BPD [hrs] Cycle [hrs]
A1 90 153.15 198 413.19 100 537.75
A2 90 153.15 198 413.19 100 528.64
A3 90 153.15 198 413.19 100 537.76
For building methods B and C it is more difficult to guarantee the face validity, because the
production includes circular and branch welds which can be executed parallel. For one robot
in the pre-assembly and one fit clamp in the pre-assembly and assembly the model is run
through and the outcome is shown in table 6-6. In these cases the longest welding time is the
pre-assembly welding time plus the blasting & painting which is a total of 664.57 hours in both
cases. Thereby the circular welds have also an influence, this can be declared in the difference
of makespan. The fit-clamp can cause a hold-up which creates a lower makespan. Both
the total makespans are above this time, therefore they are both validated. The difference
between building method B and C can be explained by the fact that building method C has
more weldings and this can cause a conglomeration.
For the ’historical validation’ makespan of other projects of HFG are compared to this re-

6-7 Assumptions for the calculation model 65
Table 6-6: building method B and C
PF_B_FT PF_B_WT PF_C_FT PF_C_WT A_C_FT A_C_WT BPD Cycle

[hrs] [hrs] [hrs] [hrs] [hrs] [hrs] [hrs] [hrs]
B 288 564.57 30 73.33 95 282.58 100 826.40
C 288 564.57 60 146.66 95 282.58 100 1150.48
search. The most important aspects is the fact that the current research focuses on smaller
jackets and assumed that the batch production is optimized in transport and fitting hours.
The welds are done with robots, which will shorten the makespan. Therefore the simulation
model should give a much lower makespan than the current projects. Therefore this will be
a rough comparison, but when the makespan has a maximum deviation of 10% the historical
data is validated.
The jacket Breagh Alpha with a weigh of about 1300 ton has a makespan of 144 days, this is
similar to approximately 1150 hours. The wind turbine jacket will have a weight of 800 tonnes.
For one jacket the production time from the simulation model is 693 hours with no welding
robots and a normal amount of fitters and welders. When these two values are compared:
the relative makespan should be about 707 hours. The percentage difference between 693 and
707 is 3%, which is a smaller than the 10% firmly stated above.
6-7 Assumptions for the calculation model
To create a calculation model, assumptions are made to simplify the calculation of the total
costs to build a jacket. These assumptions are:
• For the assembly turning system a rough estimation of the costs is made, based on
overhead cranes.
• The costs of the area is neglected, because of the use of an existing yard and assuming
no more extra area is needed for the production.
• The working hours of the fitters is equal to the hours they are working at fitting.
• One operator is assigned to 4 welding robots.
6-8 Input and output variables of the calculation model
By knowing the input and output variables for the model the kind of calculation which should
be done are determined. Firstly, the calculation model has as input configuration parameters
described in subsection 6-8-1, which are estimated for the calculation model. Secondly the
operative performance is used as output variable from the simulation model, already described
in subsection 6-3-4. Finally the output variable costs is mentioned in subsection 6-8-2.
6-8-1 Configuration parameters of the calculation model
For the model some values are used to determine the costs. The costs per equipment is
fixed: the investment and the maintenance costs. Secondly the pay-off time is determined,

66 Modeling
therefore the costs, can be calculated. Another fixed value is the assembly turning system:
currently this is a non-existing system. After talking with multiple welding engineers and
project managers the purchase price of the assembly turning system was determined. In table
6-7 the different purchase prices, maintenance costs per year and pay-off time are mentioned.
These prices are a rough estimation, because no solid price is determined and the maintenance
costs are also different each year.
Table 6-7: The costs
Purchase Maintenance Pay-off

price [euro] costs per year [euro] time [years]
Welding robot 600.000 20.000 5
Fit clamp 300.000 7.500 5
Multi-wheeler 20.000 1.000 1
Crane 20.000 1.000 1
Assembly turning system 30.000 5.000 1
6-8-2 Costs
With the operative performance of the simulation model the calculation model can calculate
the KPI: costs. The model has to satisfy to the KPIs which are defined in section 4-10. The
costs can be compared and validated to the costs which Bilfinger makes, discussed in section
3-7-6.
6-9 Calculation model
A simplified model is made in excel which represents the total costs for building a jacket.
The total costs consists of investment costs for the different kind of equipments, the costs of
the use of the area, and the costs of the employees. The formulas for these different costs are
defined in equation [6-2], [6-3] and [6-4] respectively. The costs of the area is neglected due
to the fact that one of the existing yards can be used for the production of the jackets.
C =I +A+W (6-1)
with
C = Total costs in euros
I = investment costs for equipment in euros
A = Costs of the area in euros
W = Costs of the employees/workforce in euros
The investment costs of the jacket consists of the equipment for the welding robot, fit clamps,
multi-wheelers, cranes and turning mechanism. These four investment costs are included in
the equation for the investments.

6-10 Conclusion 67
PW R
I = nrW R ∗ ( + M CW R )
P OW R
PF C
+nrF C ∗ ( + M CF C )
P OF C (6-2)
+nrM W ∗ (PM W + M CM W )
+nrC ∗ (PC + PM C )
+(PT M + M CT M )
with
nrW R = Number of welding robots used
PW R = Price of welding robot in euros
P OW R = Pay off time welding robot in years
M CW R = Maintenance costs of welding robot per year in euros
nrF C = Number of fit-clamps used
PF C = Price of fit-clamp in euros
P OF C = Pay off time fit-clamps in years
M CF C = Maintenance costs of fit-clamps per year in euro’s
nrM W = Number of multi-wheelers used
PM W = Price of multi-wheeler in euros
M CM W = Maintenance costs of multi-wheeler per year in euros
nrC = Number of cranes used
PC = Price of cranes in euros
PM C = Maintenance costs of cranes per year in euros
PT M = Price turning mechanism for the assembly in euros
M CT M = Maintenance costs of turning mechanism for the assembly in euros
A = PA ∗ AJ (6-3)
with
PA = Price per m2 in euros
AJ = Area used in m2
W = nrE ∗ W H ∗ CH (6-4)
with
nrE = Number of employees
W H = Working hours in hours
CH = Costs per hour in euro/hr
6-10 Conclusion
From the implemented simulation model in FlexSim described in this chapter different ex-
periments can be executed. The input variables [6-3] will varied for the experiments to draw

68 Modeling
conclusion for the different process design concepts and building and assembly methods. With
the output of the simulation model and the configuration parameters [6-8] the costs for the
jackets is calculated.
The calculation model is validated and verified based on the expertise of a business analyst.
Therefore this is not discussed in detail in this chapter. The calculation model will be used
from excel and calculates the costs.
The implementation is verified according to the specifications in subsection 6-6-1. The model
is validated in subsection 6-6-2 by:
• Data validity: checked by experts and calculated with the use of excel spreadsheets.
• Conceptual model validation: the model is run and checked on first-in first-out basis,
which is validated. The materials for the first jacket went in until jacket number 50 and
the jackets went out the simulation model in the same order.
• Operational validity:
– Comparison to other models: In comparison to the other simulation model the

other simulation model has a lower cycle time of 30%, but this can be declared by
the optimization and less NDT and detail in the production process. Therefore
the simulation model is validated.
– Face validity is guaranteed by the employees of HFG
– Historical data validation: the numbers from previous projects of Heerema, a jacket
of 1300 ton has a makespan of 1150, where one jacket of 800 ton 693 hours. When
this is compared relatively the deviation of the simulation model is 3%, therefore
the simulation model is validated.
On the one hand can be concluded from the validation of the simulation model that the
simulation model can be used to compare the different process design concepts, the building
methods and the assembly methods at costs and makespan. But on the other hand it will
be difficult to give an absolute number for the costs and makespan. It will stay a rough
estimation for the makespan and costs, therefore the results of the experiments should be
interpreted relatively from each other.

Chapter 7
Experimental plan/results
In chapter 5 the production line concepts are designed together with different building and
assembly methods for the jacket design. The concepts are modeled in a simulation model in
FlexSim in chapter 6. The goal of this chapter is to answer sub-question 6: Which design
concepts can meet the requirements of the defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? In
table 7-1 the difference between the two different process design concepts is briefly illustrated.
In table 7-2 the three different building methods are presented: for building method A three
different assembly methods are defined. The different building and assembly methods are put
through both process design concepts.
Section 7-1 gives the assumptions which are made for the experiments. In section 7-2 the
number of replications is calculated. Section 7-3 provides the input file for the simulation
model. In section 7-4 the variables used for the experiments are discussed. The first experi-
ment is executed in section 7-5 and the second experiment in section 7-6. The material costs
are added for the second experiment in section 7-7, also with a sensitivity analysis of the
material savings. In section 7-8 a conclusion is drawn about the results for the simulation
model.
Table 7-1: Process design concepts
Description
1 The blasting & painting is put at the end of the production processes [5-7-1]
2 The blasting & painting is put between pre-assembly and assembly process [5-7-2]
Table 7-2: Building methods for building method A, B and C for subsection 5-4-2
Description
Design of the jacket without stubs
A
Different assembly methods A1, A2, A3 shown in figure 5-2
B Design of the jacket with stubs
C Design of the jacket with stubs with extra circular weldings to create smaller parts

70 Experimental plan/results
7-1 Assumptions for the experiments
• The first experiment, base scenario building method A, is only executed for process
design concept 1.
• The maximum number of robots that Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG) will purchase
is 12 welding robots in total.
• The maximum number of fit-clamps that HFG will purchase is 12 fit-clamps in total.
7-2 Number of replications
The simulation model is stochastic, therefore the results of a single model run may not
be representative. The number of replications is determined to get a representative result,
calculated by the use of equation [7-1], applied on an experiment. At first dn is determined,
this is 0.5 width of the confidence interval expressed as a percentage of the cumulative mean.
On beforehand a drequired is defined, based on the confidence interval, which is set on 95%.
This gives a α of 0.025, therefore the drequired is set at 1.
Sn
100 ∗ tn−1,α/2 √ n
dn = (7-1)
X̄n
with
n = number of replications
X̄n = cumulative mean
Sn = estimate of the standard deviation
tn−1,α/2 = student t-value
In Appendix G, figure G-1 the graph for the number of replications is presented. The confi-
dence interval will be 99% and thereby the y-axis must be down 1%. In the graph is shown
that between the 5 and 6 replications the confidence interval is 99%, therefore the number of
replications will be 6 for all the experiments.
7-3 Input file for the simulation model
For each building method an input file is created. For building method A, three different input
files are made, each presenting a different assembly method. The input files are presented
in Appendix H. In total there are five different input tables available: three for the different
building methods A1, A2, A3: one for building method B and one for building method C.
The input files for building method B and C are determined by the best assembly method,
concluded from the experiment with the three different assembly methods from building
method A.

7-4 Variables for the different experiments 71
7-4 Variables for the different experiments
In the simulation model multiple variables can be changed for every experiment, therefore
changing the configuration and endeavor to an optimal situation. The changeable variables
are mentioned in section 6-3. When changing all the variables, the experiments will get
extremely large and hard to process. Therefore after testing with different variables, the
important variables for the production process are defined. These variables will be changed
in a predefined range and the other variables are set at their optimum number. For each
experiment, the values for the predetermined variables are presented. Depending on the
building methods, the following variables will be changed:
• Number of fitters in pre-assembly

• Number of welding robots in pre-assembly
• Number of fit-clamps in pre-assembly
• Number of fitters in assembly
• Number of welding robots in assembly
• Number of fit-clamps in assembly
7-5 Base scenario building method A
The goal for this experiment is to compare the different assembly methods of building method
A, for design concept 1, in order to know which assembly method is the optimal solution.
The different assembly methods for building method A are shown in figure 5-2. The costs
will be compared against the makespan of the jackets. The costs will be expressed in the
number of robots, because the number of robots is the only variable that will be changed in
this experiment. The remaining variables are kept constant and the value for each variable is
put in table 7-3.
This experiment is executed only on process design concept 1, because it does not concern
an optimal process design concept. It concerns the comparison between the three assembly
methods for building method A.
7-5-1 Variables
The variables for each building method, except the number of welding robots, are kept con-
stant and therefore the costs. For this reason the number of robots can be compared to
the makespan and depending on the best makespan in comparison to the number of robots
a conclusion can be drawn: which of the assembly methods is the most cost efficient. The
difference between the influence of robots in the pre-assembly and assembly process is not
examined. Appendix F presents the different input variables for the welding robots in the
pre-assembly and assembly.
The variables that are varied for this experiment:
• Welding robots for the pre-assembly

• Welding robots for the assembly

Figure 7-1: The different makespan for building method A1, A2 and A3 with different number
of welding robots added on the x-axis
7-5-2 Results
After executing the scenarios, different values for the makespan are the result for the same
number of welding robots, due to the different distribution between the welding robots for
the pre-assembly and assembly. The lowest makespan for each number of welding robots is
selected and shown in a graph for the lower limit of makespan. For building method A1, A2
and A3 these lines are drawn in figure 7-1.
The welding activity at the assembly process is a bottleneck in the production process, in
other words the drum [3-2-4] of the drum buffer rope. This bottleneck is found by comparing
the upper four dots: even if more robots are added to the pre-assembly, almost the same
makespan is found. Only when the assembly welding is not a bottleneck anymore the number
of welding robots in the pre-assembly can make a difference for the makespan.
7-5-3 Conclusion
For HFG is the option with the lowest number of robot the most attractive, because the
investment costs are lower. It has been concluded that building method A3 has the lowest
makespan versus an acceptable number of welding robots. This was expected due to the fact
that building method A3 has the best product wheel [3-2-3] for the assembly process. For
every assembly step the same parts from the storage and pre-assembly are needed, therefore
no accumulation of parts takes place after the pre-assembly and a good logistic flow is created
in the simulation model.

7-6 Comparison of building method A, B and C 73
Table 7-3: Set values for the variables that are not going to be varied in the experiment
Number
Places pre-assembly 6
Fitters pre-assembly 4
Fit-clamps in pre-assembly 0
Cranes 1
Multi-wheelers 1
Buffer 5
Fitters in assembly 4
Fit-clamps in assembly 0
Operators 4
Blasting, painting drying places and equipment 2
7-6 Comparison of building method A, B and C
In the experiment base scenario, assembly method A3 has been presented as the best alter-
native for building method A, hence in the comparison of building methods A, B and C,
assembly method A3 will be used.
This experiment is executed with building method A, B and C, to compare and optimize
the different building methods regarding the two different process design concepts. The goal
of the experiment is to find the best building method and which design concept for the two
production lines is the optimal solution for this research. The optimized design will be based
on the predetermined KPIs.
Table 7-4: Set values for the variables that are not going to be varied in the experiment for
design concept 1: blasting & painting at the end of the production line (- means it can be varied)
A B and C
Places pre-assembly 6 6
Fitters pre-assembly 4 4
Welding robots pre-assembly - -
Fit-clamps in pre-assembly 0 -
Cranes 1 1
Multi-wheelers 1 1
Buffer 10 10
Fitters in assembly 4 0
Welding robots in assembly - 0
Fit-clamps in assembly 0 -
Operators 4 6
Blasting, painting drying places and equipment 2 2
7-6-1 Variables
First, it is determined which variables will be varied in this experiment. It is important to

determine in which range the variables will be used for the experiment, this is reflected in the

scenarios which are drawn.

In the experiment, only one multi-wheeler, crane and turning system will be used, because
it is not necessary to use more. Therefore, those variables will be set to 1. The buffer does
not have a lot of influence, only when it is set on a small number, which will not be the
case. For the blasting & painting we take two workstations which can work parallel. For the
simulation model with the blasting & painting after the pre-assembly smaller stations will be
used, therefore a lot more stations are needed to keep a good flow in the system.
The different variables for the experiment are displayed in Appendix F. In table F-3 the
different variables for design concept 1 for building method A3 are presented. In table F-4
the variables for design concept 1 for building method B and C are shown. In table F-5
and F-6 the different variable for design concept 2 for building method A3 and B and C are
displayed respectively.
7-6-2 Results
Figure 7-2: Design concept 1: The costs versus the makespan
Design concept 1: blasting & painting at the end of the production line
In figure 7-2 the graph of the different building methods A, B and C is presented, with the
blasting & painting at the end of the production line. From this graph can be concluded that
building method A is the best option when looked at the lowest costs and makespan. The
lowest makespan is in this case: 5923 hours.
The costs are calculated by using the calculation model presented in section 6-9. A rough
estimation is made, taking in consideration the man hours and the equipment which needs

7-6 Comparison of building method A, B and C 75
to be purchased. The area is not taken into account, because of the fact that an existing
location can be used.
Figure 7-3: Design concept 2: The costs versus the makespan
Design concept 2: blasting & painting between the pre-assembly and the assembly
In figure 7-3 the three different building methods are presented with the blasting & painting
between the pre-assembly and assembly. The graph shows that the three building methods
are a lot closer to each other, but building method is still the optimal method.
Comparison of two design concepts
The best options for both design concepts are compared for the costs without the material
costs. In both cases, this is building method A, shown in figure 7-4. This figure shows that
process design concept 1 is more interesting for low costs and process design concept 2 for a
short makespan. Keeping in mind that the costs in in this figure are only a part of the cots.
Therefore process design concept 2 is more efficient for the makespan and the costs are only
a small percentage of the total costs.
7-6-3 Conclusion
The comparison of the two design concepts with both their best building method options
shown in figure 7-4, give the two optimal options put in table 7-5. For process design concept
1 the makespan is longer, but the costs are lower and for concept 2 the makespan is shorter

Figure 7-4: Comparison of the best options for both the design concepts: the costs versus the
makespan
Table 7-5: The best options for the two process design concepts
Makespan [hrs] Costs [euro]

Concept 1 - building method A 5923 20.977.000
Concept 2 - building method A 4773 22.377.000
and the costs higher. The difference between the costs is approximately 2.600.000 euro, but
concept 1 comes closer to the requested makespan of the production of jackets with two
working shifts, 80 hours/week: 4160 hours per year. Therefore design concept 2 is a better
option, assuming that 2.600.000 euro can be overseen looking at the total costs to build an
offshore jacket.
7-7 Material savings
In the previous sections the material costs of building method A, B and C is not included in
the costs. Therefore this section will take a look at what these material savings will change
in the outcome of the experiments.
For the results it is important to know that the costs for the jackets can be analyzed in two
ways: with or without material costs. When assuming that building method C has material
savings of 5% relative to building method A this can create a big difference, because the
material costs are a large amount of the total costs.

7-7 Material savings 77
Figure 7-5: The costs + material costs versus the makespan for the best building methods for
the two design concepts
For design concept 1 the material costs are added to the costs. In appendix G in figure G-2
the material costs are included in the total costs, with for building method A 0%, building
method B 4% and building method C 5% material savings. This gives a total other picture of
the results. In the figure a clear shift can be observed: building method B and C are clearly
lower in costs than building method A. Therefore taking the material costs into the results,
for design concept 1, building method B is the optimal solution. But the material savings of
the different building methods cannot currently be determined.
For design concept 2 the material costs are added in the total costs in Appendix G figure G-3,
In this case also building method B is the best option, but once again these material savings
cannot be substantiated.
Figure 7-5 shows the comparison between the two design concepts. The conclusion is that
concept 2 is the best option.
7-7-1 Sensitivity analysis
Sensitivity analysis is a technique used to determine how different values of an independent

variable impact a particular dependent variable under a given set of assumptions. This
technique is used within specific boundaries that depend on one or more input variables, such
as the effect that changes in interest rates have on bond prices. Due to the fact that the
material savings for the different building methods are established, a sensitivity analysis is
executed on the material savings. Because the material savings have a big influence on the
outcome of the experiments as is shown in figures G-2 and G-3. : the total costs with less

material savings for building method B and C have been considered. These percentages are
presented in table 7-6.
Table 7-6: Deviations from the base material savings
1 2 3 4 5 6
B 4.0% 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 -
C 5.0 4.5 4.0 3.5 3 2.5
Scenario 1 in table 7-6 is the base of the material savings, applied in figure G-2 and G-3. Next
is lower material savings considered and thereby less influence. In Appendix G in figure G-4
and G-5 is a decrease of material savings, a conclusion about the sensitivity can be drawn.
For concept 1 it is shown that for a decrease of 50% building method A is the optimal solution.
But 50% is a very high decrease. For design concept 2 a decrease of material savings by 50%
doe not have any impact. It can be concluded that until about 45% decrease of the material
savings the experiments still give the same result.
7-8 Conclusion
From experiment 1 it can be concluded that building method A3 is the optimal building
method with the lowest KPIs for the makespan and costs. These values for the makespan are
not compared to reality.
In experiment 2 the different building methods A, B and C are compared with respect to
the two design concepts: blasting & painting between the pre-assembly and assembly and
blasting & painting at the end of the production line. Secondly a comparison is made taking
the probable material savings into account. When the material savings are taken into account
building method B for concept 1 and C for concept 2, are the optimal solutions.
Without taking the material savings into consideration a different outcome is reached. For
both the design concepts building method A is the best option. These two results are com-
pared at the two design concepts and result in a graph where building design concept 2 is the
best option.

Chapter 8
Conclusion and recommendations
In section 8-1 the research question is answered, based on the answers of the subquestions and
the conclusions of the previous chapters. In the section 8-2 the influences on the conclusion
of the limitations and assumptions made in this research are discussed. Section 8-3 gives
recommendations for further research and advice if investments for the offshore wind turbine
jackets could be profitable.
8-1 Conclusion
In order to answer the research question the sub-questions have been used to get a better
view at the problem and at the way this research should be approached.
8-1-1 Answering sub-questions
More interest if for the the wind turbine market, therefore different possibilities have been
analyzed for designing the jackets. Resulting in the optimal design for a jacket for Heerema
Fabrication Group (HFG): the three-legged jacket. HFG also provides a detailed design for
this three-legged jacket, which is used for the production line.
From the theory the use of lean manufacturing is interesting, analyzing the current system
based on a flow chart, defining the lean wastes, determine the value added and no-value added
processes, adjust the product wheel, takt time and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
A small desk research is executed for batch production industry, concluding that the painting
process could also be performed after assembling the product.
After analyzing the current system, it turns out that especially in the field of automation
several processes can be improved. The main bottlenecks in the current system are the
supply of materials, the blasting & painting process and the welding process.
The KPIs for designing a new production line are defined: the makespan and the costs. Next,
the possibilities for the changes in the production process are analyzed. A morphological

80 Conclusion and recommendations
overview of the different solutions is created, one main process design concept is defined for
the different activities.
To begin with, two process design concepts have been defined, by switching the sequence of
processes: design concept 1, where the blasting & painting takes places after the assembly
and design concept 2, where the blasting & painting takes place after the prefabrication for
each part. For concept 1 the jacket will be blasted and painted in one piece. With regard to
transportation not a lot of progress could be made, because there would be almost no flow
for a batch production if a bench assembly line would be applied.
Different ways to build the jacket have been defined. Building method A: point-to-point,
building method B: with stubs and building method C: with stubs and extra circular welds
for more material savings. For each of these building methods different amount of welds are
used. It is assumed that by using stubs instead of point-to-point material savings result,
for building method B 4% material savings and for building method C even 5% relative to
building method A.
Figure 8-1: The optimal assembly method
There are also different assembly methods defined for the building methods. These are applied
on building method A. In the first experiment the assembly methods have been tested and in
the research the best method has been used for building method A, B and C.
The process design concepts and possible building and assembly methods for the jacket design
have been determined. A conceptual model to compare the performance of the different
concepts and methods is designed. This is composed of a simulation and calculation model.
The different input and output variables are mentioned, as are the configuration parameters.
The conceptual model is implemented into a simulation model in the program FlexSim. This
simulation model is verified and validated based on multiple methods. Therefrom it can be
concluded that the simulation model can mainly be used to compare different concepts and
methods, because it is hard to validate the model at objective numbers.
8-1-2 Answering research question
What is the best design for a production line with cost efficient design, assembly and building
methods for the production of multiple jackets per year for offshore wind turbines?
The best design for a production line is to automate the welding process by welding robots
to produce 50 jackets in one year. To keep a good flow in the production line the order

8-2 Discussion 81
of processes should be: pre-assembly, blasting & painting and assembly, concept 2. The
conclusion is drawn that process design concept 2 is a better option with building method A.
Secondly, the best assembly method to use for the batch production is option 3, also shown
in figure 8-1. Without taking the material savings into account, the optimal building method
is method A, with point-to-point welding. When the materials savings are considered, the
optimal method will be B, with stubs. For all the possibilities is concept 2 the best option:
blasting & painting between the pre-assembly and assembly. When HFG can give the approval
that the material savings are feasible, building method B: with stubs is the optimal option
for the batch production.
8-2 Discussion
To design this production line and the building and assembly methods, multiple assumptions
were made in section 5-1. The influence of these assumptions on the conclusion are discussed.
The two processes, pre-fabrication and pre-outfitting, are removed from the production line,
therefore the makespan will be shorter than it would be in reality. This would not be a big
influence, because these two processes could be executed parallel to the main processes.
The needed materials are assumed as always available. This assumption is for the batch
production quite plausible, because with producing 50 jackets, HFG will become a bigger
buyer of steel. Therefore they can make more demands towards the supplier of steel, greater
chance that the materials will be delivered on time.
For the design one standardized jacket design is used. This is for one batch production very
likely when looking at the wind farm market. Therefore it is applicable for this research, but
when HFG will produce multiple
The cutting and rolling of plates is assumed as already done. This assumption will be very
likely for the batch production of one standardized product, because all the parts for every
jacket will have the same dimension. Therefore the supplier will probably deliver the parts
in the right size and shape.
For the design of the production line only the pipes are taken into account, with which
the main construction of the jacket is built. The piles, anodes, transition piece and the
extra attributes needed for the jackets are left out to simplify the production process. The
consequence is that the production times are not representative for the production of one
entire jacket. But these aspects can be produced at different companies.
For the calculations of the welding volumes a bevel angle of 45 degrees and a root gap of
6.5 mm are assumed for each weld. This assumptions does not influence the conclusion of
this research, because the specific bevel angle and root gap will not differ a lot with these
assumptions.
8-3 Recommendations
For further research the simulation model could be enlarged by adding more specific tasks,
thereby giving the model more detail. Secondly, a lot of variables can be changed, therefore

82 Conclusion and recommendations
varying more variables to get a better insight into the process. In the current state the
simulation model is more useful to get a rough estimate and to compare different building
methods of jackets than to get a hard number on the makespan. Therefore a lot of different
designs and building and assembly methods can be compared in this simulation model.
To create a production process where 50 jackets per year can be produced, it is recommended
not only to design a better production line, but also optimize the design the jacket. By
optimizing the jacket design the wall thickness can be decreased and thereby material savings
will result. Also the weldings will have less volume because of the decreasing wall thickness,
therefore less welding time is needed.

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Appendix A
Paper
This Appendix contains a scientific research paper that summarizes this research. The paper
will start on the following page.

86 Paper
The batch production of jackets for

offshore wind turbines
S.C.J.M. Kuijs, M.B. Duinkerken, G. van Noordt, R.R. Negenborn
Technical University of Delft
May 25, 2017

Abstract
Heerema Fabrication Group is currently producing one-off products, mainly jackets. Nowadays the market
for these jackets for oil platforms is decreasing, while the market for jackets for offshore wind turbines is
growing. The possibilities for a cost efficient design for a production line and different ways to build and
assemble the jackets are central in this paper. The challenge is to produce 50 jackets in one year, with an
optimal production line. A literature study is executed on different methods to design and define requirements
for a production line. With this information the current production processes are analyzed and mapped, based
on the logistic, material and resource flow. Subsequently, two process design concepts are developed, next to
different building and assembly methods. These different aspects are compared by using a simulation and
calculation model. Multiple experiments are executed with as outcome that the current order of processes
should be unchanged and that the use of stubs in jacket designs is optimal with regard to the material savings.
I. Introduction HFG to invest into the green energy branch

and producing jackets in batch production.
H
eerema Fabrication Group (HFG) is In the current situation HFG is producing
specialized in the engineering and fab- one-off products, each with an unique build-
rication of large and complex struc- ing scheme. If their time planning would be
tures for the offshore oil & gas and energy- adjusted to 50 jackets instead of one jacket per
related industries. One of these products are year, the makespan2 would be 15.2 years.
jackets1 , substructures for drilling platforms.
This paper is focusing on designing a cost
These substructures weigh between the
efficient production line and jacket design for
10.000 and 20.000 ton. The height of a jacket
the production of offshore wind turbine jackets.
can be about 120 meters, the size of 30 trucks
The scope includes the tubular construction of
put together. The width between two legs can
the jacket and the production processes which
be about 50 meters. An example of a jacket is
take place on the yard.
shown in figure 1, mainly consisting of four
legs with crosses in between. To get an idea of This production line is designed for different
the production time of a jacket: to make one aspects of the batch production: process de-
weld, a crosspart to a leg, can take up to 330 sign concepts, building and assembly methods
hours [5]. for the jacket. For these three aspects differ-
Nowadays, the demand for jackets for off- ent concepts are designed and tested, based on
shore wind turbines is increasing. In addition, predefined KPIs, with a simulation and calcu-
the offshore oil and gas price is falling and lation model. The challenge is to produce 50
HFG has had to fire 70% of their work force. jackets in one year, with an optimal production
For these two reasons it could be profitable for line and to keep the investments low.
1 Tubular construction that serves as substructure to
offshore units 2 The time to produce the defined number of jackets

87
referred to as the drumbeat for the production

process [2, 3]. By determining the takt time
and knowing the drumbeat, the system can be
optimized.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are im-
portant to emphasize the critical conditions of
the design and make them measurable. The
KPIs are the makespan and the costs, defined
by the interests of the customers and HFG.
ii. Assembly Line Problem (ALP)

To design a production line, which consists in
this case of an assembly line, different assem-
bly models are possible as presented in figure
2. A single-model line exists of only one prod-
uct which goes through the assembly. In a
Figure 1: The different aspects of a jacket
mixed-model line there are different products
which will be produced in the same assembly
II. Methods line. And for a multi-model line, also multiple
products are produced in different assembly
For designing a batch production line, different lines. By defining what kind of assembly line
methods can be used, in this case: lean manu- there will be used, the way to design can be
facturing and Assembly Line Problem (ALP). determined [4].
From these two methods multiple components
are used to tackle the problem, discussed in
the following section.
i. Lean manufacturing
By using a lean manufacturing approach, the
production of a product to meet the demand
with minimum makespan and eliminating or
minimizing non value added activities, the cur- Figure 2: Possible assembly models
rent production system is analyzed on the dif-
ferent flows in the process. In addition, by
using lean wastes the bottlenecks are defined.
iii. Current system analysis
The seven wastes are: overproduction, inven-
tory, waiting, motion, transportation, rework To know the exact processes and activities in
and over processing. the production system, the current system is an-
In order to design a production line it is vital alyzed. This is done based on the three flows in
to know if the system will use a push or a pull the system: the material, logistic and resource
market. flow. The material flow is the input and out-
The product wheel is a tool which is used put of the flow chart, respectively pipes and
to determine the flow in the production sys- the jacket. The logistic flow is the sequence
tem. Using the product wheel can help reduce of the processes and activities, presented in
changeover times by scheduling products in an the flowchart in figure 3. In red the processes
optimized sequence [1]. which fall into the scope of the research: pre-
Takt time is the basic rate of production, also assembly, blasting & painting and the assembly.

88 Paper
Figure 3: The flow chart of the current production system of jackets
These processes will be used for the production and workforce for each activity. The current
line design. system uses multi-wheelers to transport parts
The pre-assembly is the process where the over the yard and cranes to transport parts
smaller parts are built: crosses and stubs. The in the different halls. For the fitting fitters,
activities in this process are: fitting3 , welding fit plates and small welding equipment are
and transport. This process is defined as a needed. For the welding activity welding
mixed-model assembly line: multiple products equipment and welders are needed. The blast-
are built at the same line. The steps are only ing & painting requires workforce and blasting
depending on the kind of weld: circular or & painting equipment. All the activities are ex-
branch welds. ecuted manually, the welding takes place with
The blasting and painting is the process a speed of 0.6 kg/hr.
where the jacket gets its protective coating. Af- The main bottlenecks in the current system
ter these two activities the jacket has to dry for are the delivery of the materials, the drying of
24 hours, these three activities have to be done the parts for the blasting & painting and the
three times. welding activity.
The assembly is the process where all the
parts are fitted and welded to each other. In
this stage of the process, the entire jacket is iv. Design of a batch production line
assembled together.
To design a production line for the batch pro-
The resource flow is the needed equipment
duction of jackets, different requirements and
3 The right parts are, before welding, mounted to each limitations have to be met for the process to be
other with fit-plates successful:

89
• The maximum area which can be used, is point welds, the crosses are welded to the legs,
the size of the yard in Vlissingen. hereby there can only be branch welded4 from
• One standardized jacket will be produced the outside.
in one batch.
• 50 jackets should be produced in one year. Table 1: Different data of the building methods
• The employees work 40 hours/week in 2
shifts, that means 4160 hours in one year. Different aspects
• Problems with the delivery of the materi- # circular material
als is not taken into account. # branch # circular
for the legs savings (%)
The production line will be assumed a pull A 96 0 0 0
market, because it produces the amount of jack- B 96 96 30 4
ets demanded by the customer. To design a C 96 126 30 5
production line different aspects are important
to optimize, therefore the three flows in the
production system will be investigated. Building method B and C use stub welds,
For the material flow the design, building shorter pipes which are welded to the legs
and assembly methods are important. HFG and can be welded from the in-and outside,
delivers a standardized three-legged jacket de- which enlarge the yield stress of the weld. The
sign, which will be used as main design for the disadvantage of stub welds against point-to-
production line. With this design three build- point welds is that more welds are needed>
ing methods have been conceived together with This is because the short pipe, the so-called
experts in the field of jacket designs. stub, also must be welded to the cross with a
circular weld5 .
Based on these building methods, three pos-
sible assembly methods are designed, pre-
sented in figure 4. The assembly methods will
be compared in the simulation model and the
best method will be used for building method
A, B and C. The assembly methods are based
on existing assembly methods and optimiza-
tion of the flow.
The most interesting part of the three build-
ing methods are the different amount of welds
and the different amount of material needed,
shown in table 1. By using stubs the wall thick-
ness of the other pipes in the jacket design can
be decreased, thereby creating material sav-
ings.
The logistic flow consists of the processes
and activities that are carried out. For the new
design of the batch production line the same
processes and activities have to be performed
to build the jacket, only the transportation over
the yard could be minimized. For the order
Figure 4: The different assembly methods applied on
of processes one change is made: the blast-
building method A
4A weld where two pipes are weld to each other at a
Building method A is based on the conven- certain angle
tional way of producing jackets, with point-to- 5 Welding two pipes straight to each other

90 Paper
ing & painting can take place between the pre-

assembly and assembly or after the assembly.
In the resource flow a lot of aspects can be
automated. For the branch welds a welding
robot can be used, with two welding arms,
welding with a speed of 3.5 kg/hr. The fitting
will be done by a mold6 where the right parts
can be positioned, which saves a lot of time.
This can only be done because a standardized
jacket is used. For the circular welds a fit-
clamp7 with a welding robot mounted, welding
with a speed of 6 kg/hr. The fit-clamp can fit Figure 5: The graph of the three assembly methods
two pipes to each other in one hour.
A simulation and calculation model are cre-
To define which assembly method is optimal
ated, to test the concepts. The input of the
for the production line, the number of weld-
calculation model consists of the number of
ing robots are compared to the makespan as
equipments, workforces and places. The ex-
presented in figure 5.
periments have been focused on varying the
The material savings are not taken into ac-
number of equipment: the fit-clamps and weld-
count when the different building methods are
ing robots.The output variables from the two
compared for the two process design concepts.
models are the makespan of the 50 jackets and
The two optimal building methods for the both
the costs for the jackets exclusive the material
process design concepts are presented in figure
costs. For the costs of the fit-clamps and weld-
6. For both concepts building method A is op-
ing robots the equation (1) is defined.
timal and process design concept 2 (blasting &
PE painting between the pre-assembly and assem-
C = nr E ∗ ( + MCE ) (1) bly) gives the lowest makespan and therefore
POE
the best option.
With
C = Costs
nr E = Number of equipments
PE = Purchase costs of equipment
POE = Pay-off time for equipment
MCE = Maintenance costs per year of equip-
ment
III. Results
Two experiments are executed with the simu-
lation model: a comparison between the three Figure 6: The optimal building method from each process
assembly methods and a comparison between design concept
the two process design concepts and the build-
ing methods with the assembly method from When the material savings are taken into ac-
the first experiment. count, the outcome of the experiment changes.
6 A standardize mold in the shape of how the pipes have
Using a sensitivity analysis, it is tested that
there is no sensitivity in the material savings.
to welded to each other
7 A clamp which is put around two pipes and can be When adding the material costs to the total
tightened with bolds until the pipes are fitted costs, it can be concluded that building method

91
C would be the optimal solution. References

[1] Colosi, L. (2007). Supply Chain & Business
process modeling . du Pont.
IV. Conclusion
[2] Clotetter, J. (2015). Lean production plan-
From the experiments is concluded that with- ning and control in semi-process indus-
out the material savings design concept 2: blast- tries. Master Thesis.
ing & painting between the pre-assembly and
assembly, is the optimal solution for building [3] Torenli, A. (2009). Assembly line design
method A. When employees work some week- and optimization. Master Thesis.
ends extra or the parts are drying in the week- [4] Nguyen, M. and Do, N. (2016). Re-
end, the 50 jackets can be build in one year. engineering assembly line with lean tech-
When the material costs are included, the niques. Science Direct.
outcome is different for the building meth-
ods, because this is due to the material savings [5] Genderen, R. (2017). From manual to au-
building method B. But the process design con- tomatic: process optimization for imple-
cept is still concept 2. mentation TKY welding robot. Thesis.
V. Discussion
When looking at the limitations for this re-

search, the conclusion is still the same when
comparing the different process design con-
cepts and building and assembly methods.
Only when it is about the hard number of
the makespan and costs, there could be some
changes.
Not all the processes are simulated and there-
fore the makespan will be smaller than in re-
ality. Also, the delivery of the materials is not
taken into account. But for 50 jackets HFG will
be al large consumer, therefore the supplier
will adhere to the agreement of the delivery.
For HFG it would be interesting to make use
of the building methods with stubs, despite of
the extra welding hours. This equals with the
material savings for the use of the stubs. To
implement the production line for HFG, the
yard in Vlissingen could be used. There are
already build two halls, which have enough
place for the designed batch production. with
knowing how much space the pre-assembly
uses, the number of places with welding robots
on both sides. For the assembly process is
one big area needed where the jacket can be
assembled.

92 Paper

Appendix B
Drawings
This appendix shows the detailed drawings with dimensions used for this research. The
drawings ares presented on the following page.

Appendix C
Takt Time
Takt time is the pace of production that aligns production demand with customer demand.
In other words, it is how fast the company can produce jackets in order to satisfy customer
orders. However, it should be noted that for industries like Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG)
in the current situation there is one contract for about 1 or 2 years where they work on. While
for the production producing wind turbine jackets the takt time will be much lower and the
the demand can be changing every few months and processes are complex due to product
variations and large difference in cycle times of processes, managing the takt time can be
challenging issue. For this dynamic demand extra resources and flexible manning is needed.
When the customer demand is high, the takt time is low, and more resources are utilized.
When the customer demand is low, the takt time is high, and fewer resources are utilized.
This frees up resources to work on other processes or on improvement initiatives.
C-1 Working shifts
Second solution to the dynamics of demand is the planned buffer in process. However, the
inventory to keep in buffer should be minimized. Thus, the takt time approach can be used
with fixed times and times can be revised after every few weeks based on the demand planning.
The company is currently operating 16 hours a day, with two shift of 8 hours, an overview of
these working hours are shown in table C-1.
The new demand for wind turbine jackets is assumed at 50 jackets per year, this is the base
of the demand. This could mean 7.3 days per jacket, therefore 175.2 hours to produce one
jacket, if each jacket is made after the next one. If the designed production line produces one
jacket each week, the total production time of one jacket can be longer if they are produced
in a batch.
To create more flow in the production process and to determine the takt time, the production
line is divided into three main parts. The takt time of the current system is not interesting
for this research, because a different approach of producing the jackets is used. For the
production of the offshore wind turbine jacket it can become handy to divide into smaller

96 Takt Time
Table C-1: The working hours at HFG
Working Working Working

hours/day hours / week hours / year
2 shifts,
16 80 4160
5 days per week
processes. Therefore the production is divided into three main parts. For the two concepts
the sequence of the parts is different. For concept 1 the normal order of parts can be kept,
but for concept 2 part 3 has to be for part 2.
• Part 1: pre-assembly: the production of the crosses and if needed, depending on the
building method of the assembly of the jacket, producing stubs onto the leg-parts.
• Part 2: Assembly: the crosses (and stubs) are fitted and welded to one side of the
leg. Therefore there are needed 5 crosses, one pipe, and the leg/leg-parts for one leg.
Depending on the building methods the parts are assembled in the right order.
• Part 3: Blasting, Painting and Drying: here the jacket will be blasted, painted and
dried three times.
Each of these three parts has a different takt time. Secondly for each part are different aspects
which can be executed parallel. These different ways of executing every part is discussed and
the different calculations for the takt times are shown. In the current system these three
parts are not really defined, and a lot of these sub-processes are done parallel. Secondly the
assembly of the jacket is different than shown in figure C-1.
Figure C-1: The different parts in the production process

C-2 Part 1 97
C-2 Part 1
For part 1 there must be made 15 crosses and sometimes also 4 stub connections per cross.
In theory 15 crosses could be produced parallel including the stubs, the cycle time would be
in this case the shortest time of producing a cross or one leg part with four stubs, and the
longest cycle time will be the time of all the 15 crosses and part with stubs. In the last case
no parallel production will take place.
C-2-1 building method A
For building method A (figure 5-1) there are no stubs at the design, therefore they do not need
to be produced at part 1. For part 1 only 2 branch welding per cross have to be produced.
This means two times fitting and two times branch welding for every cross.
C-2-2 building method B and C
For building method B and C the different kind of nodes which need to be produced must
be known for the welding time. In figure C-2 the different kind of nodes for building method
B and C are shown. For building method C the most parts are needed for the crosses and
thereby the most welds to build one jacket. Most of the welds are done in the pre-assembly.
Figure C-2: The different kind of nodes in building method B and C for the assembly
C-3 Part 2
Part 2 is the assembly of the parts produced in the pre-assembly and the parts which are
transported from the storage and needed for the assembly. For the different building building
methods the kind of parts from the pre-assembly and storage are different.
C-3-1 building methods A
For building method A the crosses produced in the pre-assembly are transported to the
assembly part, just as the legs are transported to the assembly from the storage. The right

98 Takt Time
parts (crosses and legs) are assembled in the right order determined by the model, which will
be First-In-First-Out (FIFO).
C-3-2 building method B and C
building method B and C are the same for the assembly part, only the production time for the
crosses are in the pre-assembly longer for building method C. But by using First-in First-out
the assembly process will be the same. The nodes and crosses from the pre-assembly must
be connect in the right order with the other parts from the storage.
C-4 Part 3
For concept 1 every building method will be painted at the end when the jacket is completely
produced. This will take a lot of time because of the size of the jacket. For concept 2 Part 3
is shifted after the pre-assembly, therefore all the parts are painted before the assembly. Also
the parts which come directly from the storage.

Appendix D
Simulation model
Figure D-1: The simulation model for design concept 1: the pre-assembly

100 Simulation model
Figure D-2: The simulation model for design concept 1: the buffer and transport between the
pre-assembly and assembly
Figure D-3: The simulation model for design concept 1: assembly

101
Figure D-4: The simulation model for design concept 1: the blasting, painting and drying
Figure D-5: The simulation model for design concept 2: the buffer, transport and blasting,
painting and drying between the pre-assembly and assembly

102 Simulation model

Appendix E
Cost model
E-1 The cost model in excel
On the next page the costs model is shown as how it is presented in a excel file. The green
boxes are the variables which are varied in the experiments executed in chapter 7. By changing
these variables the total costs will vary.
There are two total costs in red. The first one is the total costs for the investments and the
second one are the total costs plus the material costs. The costs for the area are fallen out
of scope, because the experiments are modified so that no additional space is needed on the
yard.

104
S.C.J.M. Kuijs
purchase costs maintenance costs pay-off time costs
# [euro] per year [euro] [years] [euro]
Fitters 6 € 500.000 €0 0 € 3.000.000
Welding robots 2 € 1.500.000 € 150.000 5 € 900.000
WR_operator 2 € 250.000 0 € 500.000
Fit clamps 8 € 900.000 € 100.000 5 € 2.240.000
FC_operator 8 € 250.000 0 € 2.000.000
Multiwheelers 1 € 20.000 € 1.000 1 € 21.000
Cranes 1 € 20.000 € 1.000 1 € 21.000
Turning System 1 € 30.000 € 5.000 1 € 35.000
Blasting & Painting 50 € 198.000 0 € 9.900.000
TOTAL COSTS € 18.617.000
COSTS + MATERIAL € 81.254.125
mass of 1 jacket [kg] 501097

nr of jackets 50
price steel / kg € 2,50
price steel 50 jackets € 62.637.125
price steel 1 jacket € 1.252.743
Master of Science Thesis

Cost model
Appendix F
Tables
F-1 Experiment 1: base scenario building method A
The different variables for the Welding Robot (WR) are presented in table F-1.
Table F-1: The variables for the welding robots
scenario WR pre-assembly WR assembly Total WR

1 1 2 3
2 1 3 4
3 1 4 5
4 1 5 6
5 1 6 7
6 2 2 4
7 2 3 5
8 2 4 6
9 2 5 7
10 2 6 8
11 3 2 5
12 3 3 6
13 3 4 7
14 3 5 8
15 3 6 9
16 4 2 6
17 4 3 7
18 4 4 8
19 4 5 9
20 4 6 10

106 Tables
F-2 Experiment 2
For the second experiment at first ranges for the variables are defined in table F-2. Based
on these ranges different scenarios are executed for each building method and process de-
sign concept 15 possible scenarios. The ranges are determined for Pre-Assembly (PA) and
Assembly (A). The Fit-Clamp (FC) is only important for building method B and C.
Table F-2: Ranges of each variable
Lower Range Upper Range Steps

PA Welding robot 1 3 1
PA Fit-clamp 4 7 1
A Welding robot 3 7 1
A Fit-clamp 3 6 1
For experiment with design concept 1 and building method A different scenarios are presented
in table F-3.
Table F-3: Experiments variables Design Concept 1: building method A
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
WR pre-assembly 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3
WR assembly 3 4 5 6 7 3 4 5 6 7 3 4 5 6 7
For experiment with design concept 1 and building method B and C different scenarios are
presented in table F-4. For these scenarios only the welding robots in the pre-assembly are
Table F-4: Experiments variables Design Concept 1: building methods B and C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
WR pre-assembly 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5
FC pre-assembly 4 5 6 7 4 5 6 7 4 5 6 7 4 5 6
FC assembly 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 6 6
For experiment with design concept 2 and building method A different scenarios are presented
in table F-5. As can be seen, other variables have been chosen than in table F-3. This should
not matter, because based on the robots the costs are determined, therefore these will be
higher with the use of more robots.

F-2 Experiment 2 107
Table F-5: Experiments variables Design Concept 2: building method A
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
WR pre-assembly 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4
WR Assembly 4 5 6 7 8 4 5 6 7 8 4 5 6 7 8
Table F-6: Experiments variables Design Concept 2: building methods B and C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
WR pre-assembly 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 6
FC pre-assembly 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
FC Assembly 3 4 3 4 5 3 4 5 6 7 3 4 5 6 7

108 Tables

Appendix G
Graphs
Figure G-1: The number of replications versus the confidence interval

110 Graphs
Figure G-2: Design concept 1: The costs + material costs versus the makespan

111

112 Graphs

Appendix H
Input file
In this chapter the different input files for the building and assembly methods are added. It
starts with building methods A1, A2 and A3 on the following three pages. Then building
method B and C are presented, both taking two pages each.

Name Prefab PF_B_FT PF_mF PF_B_WT PF_mWR PF_C_FT PF_C_WT PF_mFC Location A_B_FT A_mF A_B_WT A_mWR A_C_FT A_C_WT A_mFC Step
leg 1A 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
x1A 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 2 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 1
x2A 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 3 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 1
x3A 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 4 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 1
x4A 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 5 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 1
x5A 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 6 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 1
b1A 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 3 1 14,03 1 0 0 0 1
leg 2B 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 2 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 2
x2B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 3 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
x3B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 4 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
x4B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 5 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
x5B 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 6 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 2
b2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 3 1 14,03 1 0 0 0 2
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 12 3 1 22,02 2 0 0 0 3
x1C 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 2 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 3
x2C 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 3 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
x3C 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 4 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
x4C 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 5 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
x5C 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 6 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 3
b3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 3 1 14,03 1 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 12 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 16 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 4
leg 1A 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
x1A 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 2 12 4 93,68 4 0 0 0 1
x2A 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 3 12 4 88,08 4 0 0 0 1
x3A 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 4 12 4 88,08 4 0 0 0 1
x4A 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 5 12 4 88,08 4 0 0 0 1
x5A 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 6 12 4 93,68 4 0 0 0 1
b1A 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 6 2 28,06 2 0 0 0 1
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
x1B 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 2 12 4 93,68 4 0 0 0 2
x2B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 3 12 4 88,08 4 0 0 0 2
x3B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 4 12 4 88,08 4 0 0 0 2
x4B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 5 12 4 88,08 4 0 0 0 2
x5B 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 6 12 4 93,68 4 0 0 0 2
b2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 6 2 28,06 2 0 0 0 2
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
x1C 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 2 12 4 93,68 4 0 0 0 3
x2C 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 3 12 4 88,08 4 0 0 0 3
x3C 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 4 12 4 88,08 4 0 0 0 3
leg 2B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 5 12 4 88,08 4 0 0 0 3
x5C 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 6 12 4 93,68 4 0 0 0 3
b3C 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 7 6 2 28,06 2 0 0 0 3
leg 1A 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
x1A 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 2 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 1
x2A 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 3 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 1
x3A 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 4 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 1
x4A 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 5 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 1
x5A 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 6 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 1
b1A 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 3 1 14,03 1 0 0 0 1
leg 2B 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 1 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 2
x2B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 2 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
x3B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 3 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
x4B 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 4 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
x5B 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 5 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 2
b2B 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 3 1 14,03 1 0 0 0 2
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 12 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 2
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 3 1 22,02 2 0 0 0 2
x1C 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 1 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 3
x2C 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 2 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
x3C 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 3 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
x4C 2 6 2 34,68 2 0 0 0 4 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
x5C 2 6 2 37,32 2 0 0 0 5 6 2 46,84 2 0 0 0 3
b3C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 3 1 14,03 1 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 12 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 16 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
leg 3C 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 6 2 44,04 2 0 0 0 3
K1A 1 6 2 50,4 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 35,79 1 1
P1A 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K1B 1 6 2 50,4 1 0 0 0 12 0 0 0 0 1 35,79 1 1
P1B 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K2A 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 1
P2A 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K2B 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 1 1
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
X1A 1 6 2 37,32 2 2 28,12 2 23 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 1
K3A 1 12 4 91 2 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 2 71,58 2 1
P3A 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K3B 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 2 71,58 2 1
P3B 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
X2A 1 6 2 35 2 2 30,14 2 24 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 1
leg 3C 1 12 4 91 2 0 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 2 71,58 2 1
P4A 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K4B 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 18 0 0 0 0 2 71,58 2 1
P4B 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 19 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
leg 2B 1 6 2 35 2 2 30,14 2 25 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 1
K5A 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 1
P5A 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K5B 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 20 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 1
P5B 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 21 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
X4A 1 6 2 35 2 2 28,12 2 26 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 1
BA 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K6A 1 12 2 72,1 2 0 0 0 11 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 1 1
K6B 1 12 2 72,1 2 0 0 0 22 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 1 1
X5A 1 6 2 37,32 2 2 28,12 2 27 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 1
K1C 1 6 2 50,4 1 0 0 0 12 0 0 0 0 1 35,79 1 2
P1C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
K2C 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 2
P2C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
X1B 1 6 2 37,32 2 2 28,12 2 23 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 2
K3C 1 12 4 91 2 0 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 2
P3C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
X2B 1 6 2 35 2 2 30,14 2 24 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 2
K4C 1 12 4 91 2 0 0 0 18 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 2
P4C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 19 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
X3B 1 6 2 35 2 2 30,14 2 25 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 2
K5C 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 20 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 2
P5C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 21 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
X4B 1 6 2 35 2 2 30,14 2 26 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 2
BB 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
K6C 1 12 2 72,1 2 0 0 0 22 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 1 2
X5B 1 6 2 37,32 2 2 28,12 2 27 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 2
X1C 1 6 2 37,32 2 2 30,14 2 23 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 3
X2C 1 6 2 35 2 2 30,14 2 24 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 3
X3C 1 6 2 35 2 2 30,14 2 25 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 3
X4C 1 6 2 35 2 2 30,14 2 26 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 3
X5C 1 6 2 37,32 2 2 28,12 2 27 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 3
BC 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 2 28,12 2 3
K1A 1 6 2 50,4 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 35,79 1 1
P1A 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K1B 1 6 2 50,4 1 0 0 0 12 0 0 0 0 1 35,79 1 1
P1B 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K2A 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 1
P2A 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K2B 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 1 1
leg 2B 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
X1A 1 6 2 37,32 2 4 56,24 4 23 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 1
K3A 1 12 4 91 2 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 2 71,58 2 1
P3A 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K3B 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 2 71,58 2 1
P3B 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
X2A 1 6 2 35 2 4 60,28 4 24 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 1
leg 3C 1 12 4 91 2 0 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 2 71,58 2 1
P4A 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K4B 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 18 0 0 0 0 2 71,58 2 1
P4B 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 19 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
leg 2B 1 6 2 35 2 4 60,28 4 25 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 1
K5A 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 1
P5A 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K5B 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 20 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 1
P5B 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 21 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
X4A 1 6 2 35 2 4 56,24 4 26 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 1
BA 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
K6A 1 12 2 72,1 2 0 0 0 11 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 1 1
K6B 1 12 2 72,1 2 0 0 0 22 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 1 1
X5A 1 6 2 37,32 2 4 56,24 4 27 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 1
K1C 1 6 2 50,4 1 0 0 0 12 0 0 0 0 1 35,79 1 2
P1C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
K2C 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 2
P2C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
X1B 1 6 2 37,32 2 4 56,24 4 23 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 2
K3C 1 12 4 91 2 0 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 2
P3C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
X2B 1 6 2 35 2 4 60,28 4 24 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 2
K4C 1 12 4 91 2 0 0 0 18 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 2
P4C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 19 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
X3B 1 6 2 35 2 4 60,28 4 25 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 2
K5C 1 12 4 88,2 2 0 0 0 20 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 2 2
P5C 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 21 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
X4B 1 6 2 35 2 4 60,28 4 26 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 2
BB 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
K6C 1 12 2 72,1 2 0 0 0 22 0 0 0 0 2 35,79 1 2
X5B 1 6 2 37,32 2 4 56,24 4 27 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 2
X1C 1 6 2 37,32 2 4 60,28 4 23 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 3
X2C 1 6 2 35 2 4 60,28 4 24 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 3
X3C 1 6 2 35 2 4 60,28 4 25 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 3
X4C 1 6 2 35 2 4 60,28 4 26 0 0 0 0 4 60,28 4 3
X5C 1 6 2 37,32 2 4 56,24 4 27 0 0 0 0 4 56,24 4 3
BC 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 0 2 28,12 2 3

2017.tel .8128

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FACULTY MECHANICAL, MARITIME AND

Specialization: Transport Engineering and Logistics

Report number: 2017.TEL.8128

Title: The batch production of jackets

Author: S.C.J.M. Kuijs

Assignment: Masters thesis

Initiator (university): Ir. R.R. Negenborn

Initiator (company): Ir. G. van Noordt (Heerema Fabrication Group, Zwijndrecht)

Supervisor: Ir. M.B. Duinkerken

Date: May 25, 2017

Student: S.C.J.M. Kuijs Assignment type: doctoral assignment

Subject: Batch production of jackets for offshore wind turbines

Dr. Rudy Negenborn

Delft, University of Technology S.C.J.M. Kuijs

Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

S.C.J.M. Kuijs Master of Science Thesis

Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

S.C.J.M. Kuijs Master of Science Thesis

Heerema Fabrication Group produceert momenteel unieke producten, voornamelijk jackets.

Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

en methoden te vergelijken, worden een simulatie- en berekeningsmodel gemodelleerd, waarbij

S.C.J.M. Kuijs Master of Science Thesis

EPIC Engineering, Procurement, Installation and Construction

KPI Key Performance Indicator

ECRS Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, and Simple

DBR Drum Buffer Rope

CCR Capacity Constraint Resource

BMO Bilfinger Mars Offshore

ALP Assembly Line Problem

HIC Heerema Innovation Center

Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

S.C.J.M. Kuijs Master of Science Thesis

Samenvatting (summary in Dutch) vii

Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

4 Current System Analysis 33

5 Design of Production Line and Jacket 41

S.C.J.M. Kuijs Master of Science Thesis

8 Conclusion and recommendations 79

E Cost model 103

Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

H Input file 113

S.C.J.M. Kuijs Master of Science Thesis

1-1 The size of a relatively small jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

3-1 The DBR principle explained in a easy concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

4-1 The current system with the main processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5-1 Left to right: building method A, B and C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

6-1 The overview of the simulation and calculation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

8-1 The optimal assembly method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

C-1 The different parts in the production process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

D-1 The simulation model for design concept 1: the pre-assembly . . . . . . . . . . . 99

S.C.J.M. Kuijs Master of Science Thesis

G-1 The number of replications versus the confidence interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

S.C.J.M. Kuijs Master of Science Thesis

2-1 The importance of each property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

4-1 Different Jacket Productions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

5-1 Number of weldings needed and material savings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

6-1 Model description verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

7-1 Process design concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Master of Science Thesis S.C.J.M. Kuijs

C-1 The working hours at HFG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96