AKRON (China) Group has decided to use FORAN as their main ship design system after a careful selection process that has lasted more than two years. AKRON is the first commercial FORAN user in China.
“FORAN is a technical leading shipbuilding software system, and is widely accepted by many shipyards and design offices in the world. Thus it is our honour to be the first user of FORAN in China, and we sincerely hope that FORAN can now be applied in more and more shipyards in China” commented Mr. Panagiotics K. Mitroulias, Executive Director of AKRON (China) Group, “We chose FORAN as our main system for ship design and construction, not only because of its advanced technology and powerful capability, but also because UFC (SENER’s partner in China) can provide a leading PLM system and digital shipbuilding solution as well as FORAN. AKRON and UFC have the same vision in the digital shipbuilding area, so we have established a long term strategic partnership to study and construct our digital shipbuilding platform in AKRON (China) Group.”
“The FORAN implementation in AKRON is the first step of the collaboration,” Mr. Geoffrey Wang, General Manager of UFC indicated, “The long term partnership with AKRON is strong proof of our investment in digital shipbuilding. Our solution can fully meet the requirements of the shipbuilding industry. We have invested in this area with significant resources, and we will continuously expand the solution to provide ever more functions and services for our customers. Also, we wish to setup a successful reference installation based on the FORAN application and digital shipbuilding with the combined effort of UFC, SENER and AKRON.”
Mr. Luis Garcia, Executive VP of SENER, sent his congratulations to AKRON as the first FORAN user in China: “We are very pleased to see that FORAN has been implemented in China, as this is in line with SENER’s strategic plans for China. Since the Chinese shipbuilding industry will be No.1 in the world in coming years, we are committed to take advantage of our experience in ship design to support UFC, in the promotion of FORAN in more and more shipyards and design offices. We will do our best to help them improve the process of ship design and construction in the Chinese shipbuilding industry, and thus to enhance the competitiveness.”
Now that FORAN has been installed in AKRON Design Department in Shanghai, and the personnel have received the necessary training, the next step is to use FORAN in the whole design process of a real project. At the same time discussions between AKRON and UFC are ongoing for the Digital Shipbuilding system based on FORAN.