European boat design innovation

The European marine industry has a 26% share of the world market but growing competition from Asia and North America is threatening Europe’s future market share, as they adapt their products more closely to consumer demands. A recent review of research has indicated that European boat manufacturers must be able to respond to their customers and offer exciting innovative products. They will have to learn to react quickly to changing consumer preferences and engage in continuous research and development. Design and manufacturing innovation are the keys to maintaining the competitiveness of the European boat industry in world markets. The opportunity created by the EBDIG (European Boat Design Innovation Group) project to transfer innovations from the automotive industry to the boat industry is expected to result in optimised design methodologies, leading to more cost effective design practices complementing and improving the knowledge and skills of small craft designers. This paper reports on existing professional development training in marine small craft design and how learning from the automotive industry could help marine industry designers and manufacturers to adapt or adopt embedded practices within the automotive industry which will enable the European marine sector to understand and exploit opportunities to excite and capture consumers' imaginations and respond to competition from Asia and North America. This paper also discusses key issues relating to design as well as manufacturing and quality for innovation transfer and skill development of designers. Some references are made to e-learning platforms such as www.egmdss.com (developed by Leonardo EGMDSS partnership including TUDEV) as well as a recent eassessment platform, www.martel.pro (developed by the Leonardo MarTEL consortium including TUDEV) with a view how a similar platform could be constructed to transfer innovation from the automotive industry in design visualisation; ergonomics and telematics; and sustainable materials via 3 courses and a networking framework.