Germany, and the residential cruise ship The
World of ResidenSea in Norway.
“We are less dependent on Finnish
shipyards these days, but without those
shipyards, other companies in the business
wouldn’t have the same chances to develop.
You need the entire infrastructure of the
shipbuilding industry around you,” said
Laiterä in the above interview with Turun
Sanomat.
Interviewed by the Finnish Talouselämä
magazine in June 2000, Alf Björkman gave
advice to shipyards: “Nowadays, 70% of
shipbuilding takes place outside the shipyard.
Managing the shipyard is no longer enough to
succeed – you need to control the entire process.
To those who complain about this being
unprofitable, I say go and look around you.”
Shipyards were now functioning as
assembly plants for ships, with a
network of subcontractors delivering all the
necessities to them, while the ships were
designed by independent design companies.
The network of subcontractors would be
present in the discussion right from the start.
“These days, a design company has to
manage how, where and when the work will
be done. Deltamarin is not a design company
in the traditional sense of the word. We
produce, refine and transfer the data that
is required to build and operate the ship,”
said Jukka Laiterä, describing Deltamarin’s
activities in an interview with Turun Sanomat.
“Our work is not done when the design or
the actual ship is ready – we are there to
serve the ship for its entire life cycle.” He also
added that “Half our employees have worked
at shipyards. We know what the work in a
shipyard is like.”
Deltamarin’s objective with networking
was to acquire world-class competence,
particularly in areas in which the company
lacked knowledge. The bar for cooperation
was set high. In Finpro’s publication from
2000, Björkman expressed Deltamarin’s
dreams of becoming the best ship design
company in the world.
Advancements in Finnish information
technology helped Deltamarin in this
endeavour.
“Thanks to technological improvements,
the remote location of Finland is not as big a
problem as it used to be. In the near future, it
won’t matter whether our people are in Raisio
or France,” Björkman said in the article.
INTERNATIONALISATION AWARD
Our work is not done when the design or
the actual ship is ready – we are there to
serve the ship for its entire life cycle.
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