December 2016

Modularity from Platform Design down to Component Configuration

In the middle of November, the Danish frigate Peter Willemoes visited Baltimore, Maryland in USA. The purpose of the visit was to give the American market an opportunity to meet a Danish Maritime Export delegation consisting of representatives from the Danish Navy and Marine Industry and hear about Danish competences and suppliers of systems and solutions for a Danish frigate – including DESMI pumps.

The Frigate was in the US to participate in an exercise together with a US Navy Carrier Battle Group. Prior to this exercise, the Danish Ministry of Defence and the Navy had allowed the ship to host a Danish delegation while presenting their capabilities to the US Navy and the US defence industry.

The frigate and its two other sister ships are unique examples of Danish engineering, workmanship, project management and knowhow. All things - when combined - form a hugely versatile platform suitable for a great range of tasks, and the modularity of the ship configuration enables changes in short time and facilitates future upgrades.

This concept of weapon and sensor modularity as well as ship design modularity can be tracked down to the components on board, and especially the pump design is based on a modularity concept.

The pumps on board the Danish frigates are designed to have as many components shared between the different pump sizes as possible. This means that parts like bearings, shaft seals, as well as bigger and more complex cast parts are interchangeable in several of the pumps on board.
The advantage of having several pumps sharing the same parts is of course that they will also share the same stock items. All in all this will cut down the stock of on board spares, and by that also the costs. In addition, the supplier will have a more lean supply of spares, all to the benefit of the customer.

In recent years, the spare parts supply from DESMI has turned more into the direction of Spare Parts Kits instead of individual items. This again makes the logistics and inventory management much easier and lower the costs.

That taken into consideration together with the fact that the DESMI pumps have great performance and high efficiency makes DESMI the best match for a modern warship.