Homo sapiens.

21, April 7.

After a light rain, the humidity in the air rose significantly.

The New Luzon Shipbuilding Cluster factory in the Visayas Islands of Luzon is still manufacturing various ships in an orderly manner.

At present, the New Luzon Shipbuilding Company has a total of eight shipyards in the Visayas region, six of which are civilian shipyards and the remaining two are military shipyards.

Huang Weida, who was recruited by Guangzhou Shipbuilding Corporation last year, after more than a year of hard work, was accepted as a new human being through a special recommendation in April this year.

His post was also transferred from the previous No. [-] Shipyard in Mindoro Island to work at the No. [-] Shipyard in Panay Island in the Visayas.

This is also the layout of the New Luzon Shipbuilding Company.

There are a total of four shipyards in Mindoro Island, all of which are civilian shipyards with a relatively low confidentiality level. They are the fifth shipyard, the sixth shipyard, the seventh shipyard, and the eighth shipyard.

The shipyards with relatively high confidentiality requirements are all concentrated on Panay Island, including the two military shipyards.

At this time, the third shipyard where Huang Weida worked was a large shipyard with a relatively high level of confidentiality, second only to military shipyards.

He was very confused a few months ago, especially when the leader of the psychological counseling team of the Ship Design Center approached him, Huang Weida was still a little at a loss.

When he was working at the Fifth Shipyard, he was actually very curious about the position of a psychological counselor.

It wasn't until more than half a month of secret contact that he knew why the company had set up the post of psychological counselor.

Especially after agreeing to join the new humans, Huang Weida learned the true face of Homo sapiens company Lushan through the biochip database.

Although there is a feeling of being on a pirate ship, there is no way for him to leave now. There is no way to get rid of the identity of a new human being, unless he chooses to commit suicide.

But with a bright future, why did he choose to commit suicide?

And as he got a deeper understanding of the internal system of Homo Sapiens, Huang Weida became more eager to integrate into this system. After all, human beings long for perfection and like to hug together for warmth.

Regarding his transfer to the third shipyard, those colleagues who didn't know about it secretly felt that he had gone through the back door. After all, Huang Weida's ability in the ship design center was really average, and there were many people who were better than him.

Huang Weida was noncommittal about this, or he simply acquiesced.

In a way, he did go through the back door.

In Homo sapiens company, if you want to enter the core department and the middle and high level, the identity of new human is the basic premise. If you are not a new human, you don't have to think about it.

Huang Weida talked with his former psychological counselor why he chose to recruit a designer with average skills, instead of those colleagues with very strong technical skills.

The psychological counselor replied: "Talent does not mean loyalty. Even their family members are unwilling to immigrate to Luzon. Such people are not suitable for recruitment."

Although it is possible to force these employees to submit to the company by forcibly injecting biochips, the problem is that it will take a while to do so.

Some people with strong psychological resistance, even if they are implanted with biochips, through hormones and pheromone induction, it is not easy to complete the transformation of personality, and it is easy to cause mental problems such as split personality, mania, suicidal psychology, and depression.

As for the state similar to Wu Xinlan, in fact, her body was controlled by the artificial intelligence of the biochip, and her personality and psychology were completely distorted through the long-term training of Sanzibada Leal.

The time cost of this kind of transformation is too high, and there must be special training personnel to carry out one-on-one adjustments, which will take about half a year.

If it is that kind of trained agent, it may not be possible to completely transform its psychology and personality in a year.

For tricky targets such as agents, Homo sapiens often adopts simple and crude soldier solutions instead of time-consuming and labor-intensive new human solutions.

Now Homo Sapiens is no longer in the early stage of entrepreneurship, and there is no serious shortage of manpower, so there is no need to swallow jujubes like this.

The usual practice is to first select a group of employees with clean backgrounds and awareness for inspection, and then contact and recruit them at the right time. The remaining natural employees are placed in unimportant subsidiaries or industries.

People like Huang Weida were screened in this way.

……

In the No. 12 fully enclosed dock of the third shipyard.

Huang Weida and several engineers discussed how to design.

This dock is not the same as an ordinary dry dock, but a large pool with a depth of 50 meters, a length of 500 meters and a width of 100 meters.

At present, in the pool, there are already a large number of technicians wearing working exoskeletons and special protective equipment, and the construction is in full swing.

A large number of detachable steel structure supports are installed on the bottom and side walls of the pool, especially at the bottom, those steel structure pillars are enough to support the weight of tens of thousands of tons.

In the middle area surrounded by the brackets, many technicians spliced ​​and combined the steel structure modules customized in advance from the layers through the boom, gantry crane, and temporary suspended steel bridge.

It can be seen from the appearance that this is a model of a ship.

A group of people walked on the suspended steel bridge.

The technicians passing by just nodded slightly, and then they were busy with their work.

"I think back then, when I was in the dock of Guangzhou Shipyard, I didn't have such good conditions." Huang Weida smiled and shook his head.

Several other engineers or designers who had stayed in Huaguo Shipyard felt the same way.

Especially front-line welders and general workers, who work for a long time in the noise, strong light radiation, and metal dust, are often prone to occupational diseases.

Such as lumbar disc herniation, physical strain, vision loss, pneumoconiosis, respiratory diseases and the like.

At this time in this dock, these problems have been solved.

All front-line employees are equipped with a working exoskeleton, which can not only easily carry a few hundred kilograms of heavy objects, but also comes with an air purification system, anti-radiation and anti-glare system, sound insulation system, internal constant temperature system and communication system, and relatively powerful protection capabilities.

With this kind of exoskeleton, it is difficult for employees to get occupational diseases.

Anyway, after many technicians work in the new Luzon shipyard, it is estimated that it will be difficult to adapt to the working environment of the previous shipyard.

Under such a strong contrast, even if the salary is doubled, it is estimated that most technicians will not leave.

As long as you have experienced the safety and comfort of this full protection, who would like to go back and endure that harsh working environment.

Of course, if you are willing to pay more than three times the salary, some people may be tempted.

The question is which of the major shipping companies in East Asia has the confidence?Dare to offer front-line welders and general workers three times the wages of the New Luzon Shipyard.

As a shipyard in a labor-intensive industry, let alone triple the salary, it is difficult to achieve even double the salary.

Huang Weida, who has been working in the shipbuilding industry for more than seven years, knows the details of the major shipping companies in East Asia. Even the shipping companies in South Korea and Dongying are actually on the same level as the Chinese shipping companies in terms of wages and benefits. Level.

Walking all the way down from the upper floor, it took more than half an hour to go around in circles before arriving at the work area at the bottom.

Looking at the heavy steel structure module in front of him, Huang Weida patted the heavy shell at the bottom: "The preliminary design plan has completed the module decomposition. I have thickened the plate of the bottom module by a factor of 2.3, so it should not be crushed."

"2.3 coefficients? It's a bit conservative. In fact, I think 1.8 coefficients are enough." Another designer said with some confusion.

But Huang Weida is very cautious: "There is no big mistake in being careful, after all, this is the first time we have designed such a huge integrated ship."

Chapter 213 Cost

Everyone carefully checked the details of the module, and found no obvious problems.

Then they talked about the cost of shipbuilding again.

Ino, the hull engineer of the shipyard, joked with a smile: "If this technology is successful, then we will expand our production capacity in the future, so we don't need to expand so many technicians."

"That is inevitable, otherwise the company would not attach so much importance to this technology." Huang Weida replied with a smile.

The integrated hull manufacturing technology in front of us is actually a variant of biosynthetic material technology.

Through the prefabricated modular formwork, the outline of the hull of the ship can be quickly formed. Inside the shell of the formwork, a special plastic tarpaulin is laid, and finally the nutrient solution, metal ion solution, hormone and pheromone are continuously injected, so that the material along the shell The body grows by itself.

They have tested a transport ship with a displacement of 2 tons before, but now the experimental transport ship is a 8TEU standard container ship with a displacement of 6500 tons.

Eno asked, "What is the current international quotation?"

An engineer engaged in construction cost replied: “Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ quotation is US$1.5 per TEU, Samsung Heavy Industries, Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding are US$1.46 per TEU, and CSIC is US$1.42 per TEU. "

[Note: TEU is a standard container]

Ino frowned: "That is to say, their cost is about US$1.3 to US$1.4 per TEU?"

"Yes, if it was a low-price order before, according to the current cost, they are actually doing a loss-making business."

Huang Weida was a little curious about the company's production costs: "What is our cost?"

"If it is an old technology, we actually only have a cost advantage in dual-purpose transport ships. The shipbuilding cost of other ships is about 7-8% lower than that of other ship companies." The cost engineer explained.

Huang Weida continued to ask: "How much can the new technology reduce the cost?"

The cost engineer thought for a while before answering this question: "We are still evaluating, and it is roughly estimated that it can be reduced by about 50%!"

"So much?" Huang Weida was shocked.

根据国际船舶机构的统计数据：一艘民用船的制造费用中，人工30％、钢材25％、动力系统12％、舱室设备和甲板设备12％、通信导航系统6％、电力电气设备5％、其他船舶配套5％、设计和管理5％。

It can be seen from here that labor + steel + power system + cabin equipment and deck equipment account for 79% of the total cost of shipbuilding.

We must know that in the manufacture of large ships, a large amount of steel is often consumed, and a large amount of labor is also required.

The profit margin of shipbuilding is usually superimposed on the contract quotation according to 5-10% of the construction cost, so the contract quotation will be 105%-110% of the total cost.

Labor is okay, after all, employee wages will not fluctuate too much.

But the price problem of steel is serious.

Assuming that shipyard A received an order in January this year, when the cost was calculated, the cost of steel was $600 per ton, but in July this year, the price of steel rose to $900 per ton.

This means that the total cost will increase by about 12.5%, reaching a level of 112.5%. At this time, the order will lose at least 2.5% to 7.5%.

Although sometimes the contract is signed when the steel price is high, and the steel price falls during the shipbuilding period, higher profits can be obtained.

The problem is that other shipping companies are not fools, they will also evaluate the market price of steel.

Unless it is a very sought-after LNG ship, or ordinary container ships, dry bulk carriers, ro-ro ships, oil tankers, etc., shipping companies often place orders during the period when steel prices are low.

And now the world's three major shipbuilding countries are in a state of vicious competition. In order to grab orders, they often lower prices with each other.

In terms of orders for ships of the same class and type, the quotations of Huaguo shipping companies are often lower than those of South Koryo and Dongying shipping companies.

Take an LNG carrier of 17.4 cubic meters (about 10 tons of deadweight) as an example.

Samsung Heavy Industries’ quotation is about 2.5 million U.S. dollars, and the profit is about 1250 million U.S. dollars; while Huaguo shipbuilding companies usually quote 2.4 million U.S. dollars, even if labor costs and steel materials are slightly cheaper, the profit is only about 1000 million U.S. dollars.

This kind of vicious competition has led to slight fluctuations in the cost of steel, and shipping companies will face losses.

Tens of millions of tons of ships are built a year, but the total profit of the industry is only a billion dollars. This is the current dilemma of the shipbuilding industry.

In fact, the three major shipbuilding countries in East Asia know that this is not going to work, but they can't stop at all, they can only roll on desperately until the other two are completely finished, and then they monopolize the entire shipbuilding industry, so that this vicious competition can be ended.

As the fourth largest shipbuilding country in the world, what should Luzon do in the face of this situation?

In fact, they cannot change the current situation, they can only participate in the involution.

Fortunately, the New Luzon Shipbuilding Company is fully supported by Homo sapiens, and it has the blessings of various new technologies.

The cost engineer gave a rough explanation to everyone:

"After adopting the integrated hull manufacturing, we can reduce the waste of raw materials by 10-25%. In addition, our hull material is silicon-aluminum steel, and the material cost is about 40% of the original; the labor cost is about 33% of the original; the power system is now The complete localization will probably be about 75% of the original level.”

Huang Weida, Yinuo and others are all good at mathematics. They calculated in their hearts and calculated the approximate situation.

According to the current cost of major shipping companies in East Asia as a reference base value.

The labor cost of the new Luzon shipyard is 10%, the material cost is 10%, the power system cost is 9%, and other costs are 21%.

Its total cost is equivalent to about 50% of the major shipping companies in East Asia.

This is because it is necessary to leave enough profits for other brother companies, otherwise the cost can be reduced by about 10%.

In other words, the cost of building a 6500TEU container ship by Samsung Heavy Industries needs to be about 8450 million US dollars.

However, the cost of building the same 6500TEU container ship by New Luzon Shipbuilding Company is only about US$4225 million.

Obviously, this gap is already very terrifying.

The cost engineer said with a smile: "In fact, everyone still ignores another advantage of our company."

"Another advantage?" Huang Weida didn't realize it for a while.

"It's the speed of shipbuilding." The cost engineer reminded.

Immediately everyone present reacted.

The shipbuilding speed of the New Luzon Shipyard is indeed very fast, and it can even be described as super fast.

Take the 6500TEU container ship in front of me as an example. If the new technology is adopted, the hull can be completed in about two months.

Then start the secondary adjustment of the internal cabin, gas turbine installation, ship island manufacturing, supporting equipment installation, and finally outfitting.

It is estimated that the construction of this ship can be completed in 130-140 days.

This speed is simply a slap in the face for other large ships that other ship companies often build for a year or two.

The unit cost is only about 50%, and the unit construction time is less than half.