The US Is Building a "Software-Defined" Shipyard: The Order of Building a Factory May Need to Change

If you were asked to invest in building a new factory today, what would you do first?
Buy equipment, build factory buildings, plan production lines, or first install an MES?
This order may have been wrong from the very beginning.

The United States is advancing a plan that is very worthy of attention from the manufacturing industry: building a new submarine component production facility, and proposing a concept called the "software-defined shipyard."
What is most noteworthy about it is not how large the investment scale is, but that software is no longer just a management tool after the factory is built – it participates in the design of the production system from the very beginning.

01What Is Wrong with the Traditional Way of Building Factories?

First, look at the traditional way of building factories.
First plan the factory building, then select equipment and arrange production lines, then connect automation systems, and finally deploy software such as MES and WMS.
It seems logical, but the problem is that how equipment is laid out, how materials flow, how processes are connected, and how quality is traced are often already fixed before software truly intervenes.
By the time the system goes live, you discover that data between equipment does not connect, production takt times do not match, and material delivery is unreasonable. What do you do?
You can only change interfaces and processes, and in severe cases, even the equipment layout must be adjusted.

This is not because the software is not advanced enough, but because some problems should have been solved before the factory was built.

02The New Approach of This New US Shipbuilding Facility

Look at this new US shipbuilding facility.
It plans to use industrial software ArsenalOS to connect manufacturing processes, assembly sequences, material flows, inspection requirements, and production documentation, enabling managers and frontline workers to understand production progress and quality status in a more timely manner.

Note, there is an important change here.
In the past, we often understood a factory as a combination of factory buildings, equipment, personnel, and production lines, with software responsible for managing these things.
Now, a new approach is emerging:

First design clearly how the product is manufactured, how processes are coordinated, how quality is assured, and how production is scheduled; then organise factory buildings, equipment, and personnel according to this production system.Software does not just record what happened in production – it helps define how production should operate.

03This Is Especially Important for Complex Equipment Manufacturing

This is especially important for complex equipment manufacturing.
For example, shipbuilding, aerospace, or complex equipment such as tunnel boring machines – many parts, long processes, and high quality requirements. A single design change may affect a whole chain of procurement, processing, assembly, and inspection.
If this information is scattered across drawings, spreadsheets, and different systems and relies on people to coordinate, the larger the scale, the higher the management difficulty.
If a digital chain connecting design, process, manufacturing, and quality is established from the very beginning, at least changes can be more easily discovered, tracked, and controlled.

Of course, software cannot replace manufacturing processes, nor can it guarantee that a factory will operate efficiently once built. This US project is still in the planning and construction preparation stage, and its real effects will need to be verified by future production.
But this direction is worthy of serious study by Chinese manufacturing.
Especially for enterprises preparing to build new factories or expand production lines.

Do not wait until all equipment is in place before asking the software company: "Can you help me install an MES?"

The better questions should be: How is our product manufactured? How is the production process organised? How do equipment and personnel coordinate? How is quality traced? After future capacity expansion, can the entire system adjust accordingly?
These questions should be answered at the factory design stage.

Because the real gap between future factories may not just be how high the degree of equipment automation is, but rather:

whether the entire factory can operate as a system.

04In the Past We Installed Software in Factories; In the Future We May First Design a Software-Defined Production System

In the past, we installed software in factories; in the future, we may first design a software-defined production system, and then build the factory.

If you were to rebuild a factory, would you choose to buy all the equipment first and then consider digitalisation, or start from the very first factory design drawing and plan software and the production system together?