Shipbuilding Industry of Bangladesh
1. Background
$The Ambassador of Bangladesh in Korea, Mr. Shahidul Islam, visited ASERC (Advanced Ship Engineering Research Centre) in Pusan National University (PNU) and requested me to find a way of establishing a long-term and mutually beneficial collaboration in shipbuilding sector between Korea and Bangladesh. At his request, I paid a short visit to Bangladesh from October 12-13, 2009. In order to understand the shipbuilding related academic and industrial environment, I visited two leading shipyards namely Western Marine Services Ltd. (WMS) and Ananda Shipyard and Slipways Limited (ASSL) and Department of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering (NAME) in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and the Marine Academy
2. Shipbuilding history of Bangladesh
I was so surprised by the fact that Bangladesh has a strong background of building ships since ancient times. I realized that this is quite natural in that Bangladesh has more than 200 rivers with a total length of about 22,155km plus a long coast line with the Bay of Bengal. It is today little known that Bangladesh was the centre of building ocean-going vessels in Asia between 15th and 17th century. In the early 19th century, the shipyards of Chittagong built many commercial ships up to 1,000 tons and also British navy vessels which participated in the battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
Due to this historic prosperous background and also a natural geo-graphical advantage, there are presently more than 200 shipbuilding and repairing yards in Bangladesh. Among them, I visited two ship yards, ASSL and WMS, which are the most modern and largest shipyards in Bangladesh. My first impression was that both of them are well organized in terms of production and assembly flow lines, and that the facilities (welding, steel cutting and design office software etc) and their size (up to about 10,000 ton) were better than I had expected.
3. Education: BUET
It was a good thing to note that in the
$The Ambassador of Bangladesh in Korea, Mr. Shahidul Islam, visited ASERC (Advanced Ship Engineering Research Centre) in Pusan National University (PNU) and requested me to find a way of establishing a long-term and mutually beneficial collaboration in shipbuilding sector between Korea and Bangladesh. At his request, I paid a short visit to Bangladesh from October 12-13, 2009. In order to understand the shipbuilding related academic and industrial environment, I visited two leading shipyards namely Western Marine Services Ltd. (WMS) and Ananda Shipyard and Slipways Limited (ASSL) and Department of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering (NAME) in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and the Marine Academy
2. Shipbuilding history of Bangladesh
I was so surprised by the fact that Bangladesh has a strong background of building ships since ancient times. I realized that this is quite natural in that Bangladesh has more than 200 rivers with a total length of about 22,155km plus a long coast line with the Bay of Bengal. It is today little known that Bangladesh was the centre of building ocean-going vessels in Asia between 15th and 17th century. In the early 19th century, the shipyards of Chittagong built many commercial ships up to 1,000 tons and also British navy vessels which participated in the battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
Due to this historic prosperous background and also a natural geo-graphical advantage, there are presently more than 200 shipbuilding and repairing yards in Bangladesh. Among them, I visited two ship yards, ASSL and WMS, which are the most modern and largest shipyards in Bangladesh. My first impression was that both of them are well organized in terms of production and assembly flow lines, and that the facilities (welding, steel cutting and design office software etc) and their size (up to about 10,000 ton) were better than I had expected.
3. Education: BUET
It was a good thing to note that in the