Investment in Design: Wärtsilä Italian Style
Corporation's production network. As the one-time Grandi Motori Trieste(GMT) works, a symbol of Italian industrialization in the 1970s, the factory has been the subject of far-reaching organizational change since the Finns took charge. It has emerged as a much leaner, increasingly efficient builder of marine diesels. Cessation of engine production at other Wärtsilä plants in recent years has imbued Trieste with additional manufacturing responsibilities, and its strengthened role as a European supplier to the international market has assumed greater significance in the light of the continuing shift of global shipbuilding and marine production activity to the orient. engine building centers maintained by the Finnish group.
Cathedral Power
After a rash of containership design and propulsion system initiatives aimed at extending the reach of the most potent engines already in production, the industry has now been presented with a powering option offering an unprecedented output from a single-engine plant. Wärtsilä Corporation has indeed pushed back the bounds, breaking with the traditional 12-cylinder limit on in-line diesel design, by proposing a 14-cylinder version of its largest two-stroke class. The addition of a 14-cylinder option to its potent Sulzer RTA96C series has been given extra effect by a four percent across-the-board uprating, such that a single-engine solution can now be offered for power requirements up to a stunning 108,920-bhp (80,080-kW).
Blending Finnish and Italian Flair
It is testament to the Finnish spirit that diesel engineering force Wärtsilä NSD, having suffered bruising financial results in 1998, has staged an effective fightback based in part on tactical change and in part on increased control of every theater of its operations. As the latest expression of the corporation's growing influence on the industry in Europe, the famous Grandi Motori Trieste name and its vast engine manufacturing complex on Italy's northeastern border with Slovenia, have been subsumed into the Finnish-controlled group and retitled Wärtsilä NSD Italia. Occupying a total area of 550,000-sq.-m., including 150,000-sq.-m. under cover, the Trieste plant is one of the most extensive in the world.
