High-Speed Wireless Transforms a Shipyard

Over the past few months, Hyundai Heavy, the world's largest maker of ships, deployed a high-speed wireless network across the yard, one of the first such installations in an industrial setting anywhere in the world. Data zips around the complex at four megabits per second, about four times as fast as on a cable modem that is common in U.S. homes.

Now, the company can use radio sensors to track the movements of parts as they go from fabrication shop to the side of a drydock and onto a ship under construction. Workers on a vessel can also access plans via notebook computers or handheld phones and hold two-way video conversations with ship designers in the office more than a mile away. Hyundai Heavy is nearing completion on the network just as it and other shipbuilders adjust to one of the worst downturns in the industry's history. In large part, the new technology is designed to help Hyundai Heavy reduce expenses and streamline production. The company estimates it will save around $40 million annually in reduced labor costs and improved efficiency.