Award for HII's Digital Shipbuilding Transformation

America's largest military shipbuilding company Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding division has been named a recipient of a 2019 CIO 100 Award for adopting business-aligned IT strategies during its integration of modern technologies into shipbuilding.

The ongoing initiative, known as Integrated Digital Shipbuilding (iDS), is transforming the way ships are being designed and built, said a press release form the Fortune 500 shipbuilding company.

The annual awards program, sponsored by IDG’s CIO magazine and the CIO Executive Council, celebrates organizations that are using IT in innovative ways to deliver business value, optimize business processes, enable growth or improve relationships with customers.

Newport News is being recognized for its use of technology business management strategies to bolster IT cost transparency and build trust, which helped the company to embrace a digital-first mindset in adopting leading-edge technologies.

Since the company’s digital transformation began two years ago, Newport News has introduced laser scanning, augmented reality, modeling and simulation, and additive manufacturing into processes to increase efficiency, safety and affordability.

The digital shipbuilding efforts also include transitioning from traditional two-dimensional paper-based instructions—the company’s primary method for conveying design data for more than a century—to digital formats.

The company currently is developing digital work packages for the aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN 80), which will be the first ship built completely paperless, and preparing to go digital with the new class of ballistic submarines, the Columbia class.

“Digital shipbuilding is the largest transformative initiative, digital or otherwise, that Newport News has embarked upon since switching from diesel to nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the 1960s,” said Bharat Amin, Newport News’ vice president and chief information officer. “I feel proud of my team for helping to drive change and empowering shipbuilders with the tools to build today’s warships with tomorrow’s technology. It’s an exciting time to work in IT and at HII.”