Digital shipyards utilize the Industry 4.0 capabilities of “Cyber-Physical Systems” (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) to evolve shipyards for the modern era. The sensors and monitoring systems deployed by CPS can communicate enormous quantities of data to an IoT device, providing an enhanced capacity for predicting and planning future maintenance. This greatly reduces operational downtime. The collected data can be shared with other IoT devices in an industrial environment, collectively called the Industrial IoT, or IIoT. Having a connected shipyard can reduce maintenance costs through predictive maintenance, energy monitoring for improved efficiencies.

Additionally, a Digital Shipyard also has benefits in the design stage of a build, ocean-going ships and submarines are physically large, with design models and mock-ups being expensive and time-consuming. By combining the Internet of Things (IoT) with cyber-physical systems (CPS), shipbuilders can produce virtual models in a fraction of the time. These are used to test, modify and improve designs before physical production commences.

Not only does this provide a much safer testing environment, but it also saves vast amounts of energy and resources that would otherwise be wasted in producing physical models.