Basic factors for designing most advantageous merchant ships 1

Abstract

Economy of a technical object is composed of numerous partial economies of its components. Profitableness is influenced by these economic properties only to a certain extent. The question is whether the ship design should aim at the most economical or at the most profitable ship. It can be shown that in each of these two cases many technical details such as the main dimensions become different. Evidently the true scale for a most advantageous ship is not profitableness (“banker’s criterion”), but the economic efficiency, called here “shipowner’s criterion”. With some simplification this is equivalent to the total annual cost per value unit produced. Though this cost can only be estimated in advance, its application is the proper means to approach the ideal of the most advantageous ship.