Marine Technology - January 2009 - Page#76

<BODY> <span id="lblContents">Fig. 2 Graphical Overview Survey selection process. The "first-stage balance factors" for an airport site selection are divided into two main items as aeronautical requirements "[flat area of land (up to 3,000 acres for a large facility), sufficiently close to population centre to allow passenger access]" and environmental constraints "(should not impinge on areas of natural beauty, sufficiently far away from urban centre to minimize the adverse effects of noise etc.)." In his book, the rules of thumb for layout of airport sites were numbered as avoidance of runway obstacles during take-off and landing procedures, crosswind components of runways should be manageable for at least 95% of operational time, and so forth. In spite of the given definitions and details of airport site selection factors by Matthews (2002), the details and explanations were not well organized in his book. In addition to that, the method for the selection of the factors was not explained. A collateral study on this subject is included in Plant Engineers Handbook (Whittleton 2001). For plant location selection purposes, the main defined factors in Plant Engineers Handbook are "factor costs" that include "proximity to raw material source," "proximity to relatively cheap and abundant energy," "availability of relatively inexpensive manpower or specialist skills," "good transport links with materials suppliers and markets," "protected markets and economies of scale," "government influences," "corporate matters," and "people matters." In this study, general rules of thumb were defined well; on the other hand, the location selection factors were not organized and grouped. Thus, the lack of location selection factors decision method, the weakness of concentration on location selection factors, and lack of industry proximity to shipbuilding of Plant Engineers Handbook are observed. The hindmost academic study in this field is by Al-Bader (2004). She underlined that for production engineers three important issues should have been taken in forethought. The first one of these issues is the selection of the right and the 36 JANUARY 2009 best place to locate a new production facility or to relocate an existing production facility, then the selection of the type of the production system, and finally to cope with the schedule changes in production plans. She offered a fuzzy method for the solution of the first important issue for a production engineer. In the application of this fuzzy method, the factors for location selection of a production plant were clearly defined as "travel distance," "travel cost," "political decision," "convenience of access," "material handling cost," "working condition," "cost of renting and maintenance," and "other characteristics." With the help of exact travel distance in kilometers, the location alternatives could be rated and selected. Although Al-Bader (2004) defined the location selection factors as described previously, the explanation of these criteria is not enough for general overview and understanding of factors; for instance, "other characteristics" could include more than the factors that are already mentioned in her study. During and after literature review, it was clearly decided that researchers and practitioners have considered closely the method for factory location selection or plant location selection. Almost none of the studies defined the location selection factors while considering that different industries have their own characteristics that make the factors differ from each other. Moreover, none of the academic researches and practitioners' studies are in the shipbuilding industry, which has unique characteristics. However, these previous studies prove the need for defining the location selection factors in shipbuilding industry. In addition, the previous studies could be used for gathering the information and building up the data pool of factors that have been selected. This research, which is a conceptual study, is probably the first and a necessary step in the process of developing a decision support methodology for location selection of new building shipyards in the shipbuilding industry. In this reMARINE TECHNOLOGY</span> <br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.digitalwavepublishing.com/" title="Digital Magazine">Digital Wave Publishing</a> </BODY>