Well engineered

Bavaria Yachts revolutionised the way boats were built 45 years ago when the brand was launched. Today that market-leading innovation continues

Having pioneered modern series production of boats 45 years ago, Bavaria Yachts is a good example for looking at the state of boat production today. When Winfried Herrmann, who at the time was fabricating windows on an industrial scale, began making boats by founding Bavaria Yachts in 1978, he more or less revolutionised the market for sailing boats – and the way in which they were built.

In stark contrast to other yards at that time, Hermann did not come from a background of boatbuilding. Instead, when planning his new boat production facility, he started with a clean sheet of paper and applied industrial principles in making his boats, rather than the standards of traditional boatbuilding. His boats were modern and well designed, but also built very efficiently and could be sold to the customer at a much lower price than those of the competition. In fact, Hermann opened an entirely new chapter in modern yacht production with his approach. This was also made possible because he was arguably the first to fully realise the potential and possibilities of GRP in large scale boat production.

Many things have changed since then and Bavaria Yachts itself has come a very long way, but the main principles remain. Herrmann was the first to apply assemblyline production to boatbuilding; his purpose-built boat factory was clean and efficient. And so it has remained. The boats are moved on the line from one station to the next as they grow towards completion, from the bare hull coming out of the lamination hall at one end to the finished yacht at the other. At each station, a team of experts do one job, and one only. When, say, the plumbers have installed the water system, for example, the boat moves on to the electricians who will do all the wiring, after which it moves on to the next station where the main components of the furniture are put into place, and so on. Between each step is a first quality control check, as one team hands the boat over to the next.

The naval architects’ role in the process

We at Cossutti-Ganz Yacht Design (CCYD) are often asked to provide not only naval architecture and design but also the engineering for a boat project including structural design. For a series boat this means not just the lamination plans, but also how the boat is built and assembled.

Man-hours are always one of the biggest figures of any boat manufacturing cost, from a TP52 to a series-built boat. Even if, for the latter, the numbers are in the fourdigit instead of the five-digit range required for a racing prototype, the designer’s task is not only to make the boat fast, nice, seaworthy and stiff, but also easy to build.

Every boatbuilding yard has its heritage and preferences on the manufacturing process depend on the boatbuilders’ skills and yard assembly methods and facilities. Our task is to integrate and develop our structural project, building up a close relationship made of open talks with (and not against!) the yard tech office and production. This connection between our office and the yard is fundamental to reach the target.

For example, to guarantee the boat’s stiffness and long life, we prefer to have the structures over-laminated and not simply glued to hull and deck. On the other hand, modern series boats’ interiors are assembled in few big blocks out of hull and then put inside, making the access to many areas difficult if not impossible. Therefore we worked very hard with Bavaria technicians to define the furniture design and assembly sequence to allow the over-lamination of the structural bulkheads to hull sides, especially in the critical areas such as chainplates.

Obviously for the bottom structure this is extremely important, especially the keel area. The trend is to laminate a big hull liner outside the boat, sometimes at a subcontractor’s premises, and glue with adequate paste to the hull bottom. This seems easy in theory, but we know that for several reasons it’s not straightforward.

For this reason, especially in the critical keel area we prefer to go the old way and laminate the structure to the hull. This ensures a good bonding and makes the boat stiffer. The downside is that it’s more time consuming and once again the structural designer must work with yard to find the correct, sometimes creative, solution to match the man-hours target with the desired overall stiffness.

This is not an easy task, but the reward is the feeling of sailing a properly built, stiff and therefore faster and more comfortable boat.

‘We have very much increased the efficiency in production’, says COO Norbert Leifeld. ‘Thirty years ago, Bavaria Yachts was very innovative and we have remained so until today, this leap in efficiency is only one example. As our product portfolio changes so do countless details in production. With the increased complexity of modern and larger yachts, the principle of design for manufacture is becoming ever more important. On the other hand, the opportunities that are offered by the developing build technology make it possible to produce with much reduced waste, for example, again making the entire process more effective.’

Another point is, that at Bavaria Yachts, the entire process of building a boat is done within the yard, which includes laminating the hulls and decks. From the first pot of resin to the finished yacht, all is done in Giebelstadt. There is no question of having to truck the bare hulls from one facility to the other, which in some other cases is halfway across Europe.

After 45 years, Bavaria Yachts’ manufacturing facility in Giebelstadt, Germany remains a showcase of production line innovation

But how does this effect the overall build quality of the boats? A popular perception is that this sort of series production is cheap and thus inferior. David Krebelder, head of production at Bavaria Yachts, obviously has a very different take on this. ‘On the contrary. Since we do each building step 10 times a day, it is reproducible and thus also more process-reliable,’ he says. ‘In terms of quality, series production is always superior to single-unit production. With the 300th boat, all problems are known and eliminated and we can achieve much higher quality. Cheaper in price per boat compared with single-unit production, but not cheap in terms of quality!’

However, boats have become more and more complex with the advance of possibilities and options in all areas. The increasingly abundant specifications of each yacht pose a true challenge to designers and builders alike, not just in designing a yacht that can accommodate all of the theoretically available extra items, but then translating the design into a construction that takes changes in waterline trim into account, with each new option added – extra battery banks, bow or stern thrusters, generators and so on. This is a giant puzzle than can only be solved through the interplay between designer, engineers and production planning at the yard. If, for example, an extra bank of batteries is to be added, the production planner might say ‘let us put them here to starboard, this is the easiest place and we only need one metre of wiring’. That is an advantage, but then the designer or engineering department will check how this will affect the trim of the finished yacht and say: ‘No, it must go to the port side, even if this means more wiring, because otherwise the trim will be affected’ – and so on.

When a production run scales up to 300 boats or more, it becomes economically viable to tighten the tolerances of quality control to a greater degree than would otherwise be possible

The interaction between the external designer and the in-house design and construction team begins almost from the first ideas for a new boat. The construction team will have to translate into efficient production what the designer has come up with in ideas, and the result will always be worked out in a dialectic way between these parties. ‘Feasibility studies, standardisation, a lot of back and forth between production and design – that's what it's all about’, David Krebelder explains. ‘Product development makes a big difference and in the end ensures product quality, as do the various quality gates that we pass in the build process.’

The joiners’ workshop is now about 80 per cent automated

‘Each work step is checked for quality and then the boat moves up a section’, explains Dominik Hart, the quality control manager at Bavaria Yachts. ‘It starts with the team’s own inspection after each step, which is then checked again at various quality gates that the boat must pass. These quality gate checks are fully documented so that we can understand them and track the entire build. In this way, should there be a recurring problem, it can easily be identified and addressed. If something is not right, is it a design issue or a process issue? Either something in the build process can be improved or it is a question of design, or the construction. This also includes the engineering: how to make the design compliant with all of the rules and certifications. This is also part of product development.’

At Bavaria Yachts, each boat has to pass eight of these quality gates, beginning with the pre-assembly of hull and deck and then all along the assembly line, including the joiners’ workshop, which also is automated to about 80 percent. And when the boat is finished, there is a final check of the entire yacht with all its equipment and components.

Interior modules are finished and then laminated into the hull

Finally, Bavaria Yachts claim to take their customer’s input very seriously. ‘We also want to improve the customer experience, which is something that is brought to our attention from the outset. We want to make sure that enquiries and complaints and suggestions are handled satisfactorily. For this, we have an internal ticket system, where enquiries are passed internally through various departments, which then decide whether something needs to be changed in the design, or if it maybe is only a matter of changing a supplier. We take our customers seriously. This is how we want to improve the product. And after all, the customers are the ones who test the boat every day’, says Norbert Leifeld.

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