TCO analysis of a modular and integral product architecture in shipbuilding

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and therefore fighting climate change is no longer a purely moral obligation. Especially for the transport sector emission regulations force companies to search for alternative solutions. These solutions need to be economic competitive with the current technology to allow companies responsible investments. For cheaper and faster design and production of goods the concept of modularization is well established in many industries. In shipbuilding, however, integral architectures are still the state of the art. In order to compare the competitiveness of a modular zero-emission ferry with an integral ferry, a TCO (total cost of ownership) analysis was carried out over the entire life cycle. This enables comparing integral and modular products. In this paper the example of a fully electric high-speed ferry is used to develop and validate a custom TCO model.