FORAN Users Meeting (FORUM 2014)

The Eighth FORAN Users Meeting (FORUM 2014) took place June 11-13, 2014 in the Parador de la Granja, Segovia, and when it was over the organizers proclaimed it a great success, recording the highest number of participants ever.
On Thursday June 12, Rafael de Góngora, General Manager of SENER Marine Business Unit, welcomed the attendees and encouraged an open sharing of experience in using the FORAN System.
Miguel Ángel Rojí, from Navantia (Spain), presented about the optimization of the design and production in the Spanish shipbuilding group of reference. Following was Kevin Duckworth, from BAE Systems Maritime Submarines (UK), who discussed the optimization of FORAN in the Royal Navy´s Successor Program (nuclear submarine deterrence), particularly about the integration with the Product Lifeclycle Management (PLM) tool. The first conference session finished with Igor Shaposhnikov, from Severnoye Design Bureau (Russia) with a lecture about the FORAN integration with a PLM tool already developed by the design office.
The second session started with Aleksey Shadrov, from Vyborg Shipyard, and Sergey Tolstoguzov, from Design Group Ricochet (Russia), with a shared speech about the implementation in the shipyard of the consecutive FORAN versions from 30 to 70, and about their recent success in the development of a floating dock to put in the water a new series of icebreakers. Jim McLauchlan, from BAE Systems Naval Ships (UK), continued with a presentation about the challenges of the use of FORAN, especially the newly developed module for the P&I diagrams in the Type 26 new destroyers program. Prabjot Singh Chopra, from SeaTech Solutions (Singapore), spoke about the required functionality for the early design stage from their perspective as ship designers, and finally Ricardo Rozados, from Abance (Spain), demonstrated with precise figures the benefits of an outfitting module-oriented design and the way to achieve it with FORAN.
At Thursday’s formal dinner, Verónica Alonso on behalf of SENER gave the FORAN Photography and Screen Capture Awards to Babcock Marine (United Kingdom) and Asmar (Chile).
On Friday, June 13, Juan Pablo Soto of Asmar (Chile) gave a presentation on the use of FORAN in the calculation of the electronic equipment precise positioning to minimize interferences. He was followed by Yiqi Song from CSDDC (China Development and Design Center). Fernando Alonso from SENER then spoke about the integration of FORAN with a PLM solution developed by SENER, and the final session ended with a presentation from Mon Seob Cho, from SENER Korea, delivering a paper on the options to customize FORAN to the demands of the Eastern shipyards.


(As published in the July 2014 edition of Maritime Reporter & Engineering News - http://magazines.marinelink.com/Magazines/MaritimeReporter)