ARL Celebrates 15 Years of Excellence

The year 2005 marks the 15th anniversary of Albacore Research Ltd. (ARL). The anniversary was celebrated during the ShipConstructor Dealer Meeting in Victoria, Canada, at the end of May.

15 years ago, ARL was founded after Mr. Rolf G. Oetter, ARL's Co-founder, President and CEO, had worked on a University lines fairing project for a year, laying the foundation for ShipCAM, which soon established itself as the best available compound curvature plate expansion program in the industry.

ARL is proud to look back on 15 years of not only continuously improving the functionality of its existing software, but also continuously adding new modules. “We go the extra nautical mile for our clients, even if that means we have to start again from scratch,” says Mr. Oetter. “Learning from, and with our clients, has always been our strength and always will be. We aim at providing software that helps our clients do their work more efficiently and thus helps them to save time and money. Many functions in ShipConstructor automate the shipbuilding process, taking care of time-consuming tasks 'automagically'.”

ShipConstructor Dealers and ARL staff met during the ShipConstructor Dealer Meeting to discuss upcoming features in
ShipConstructor 2006 and learn about added features in ShipConstructor 2005.

Now ARL employs almost 40 employees, who are all working hard on the current NSRP project, several SBIR projects, and the upcoming ShipConstructor 2006 release with DDROM™, as well as supporting local requirements worldwide, such as the Japanese market to give only one example. Fourteen dealers plus the subsidiaries ARL Asia in Singapore and ShipConstructor Software USA, Inc. are taking care of ARL’s international clients. The ShipConstructor customer base has grown to over 200 companies worldwide with over 4000 licenses in use.

And there is no end in sight! For 2006, ARL plans to add an Electrical module in collaboration with Art Anderson Associates, USA, and is further working with Atlantec Enterprise Solutions on a project to add a Part Design Class to the Common Parts Catalog. ARL’s plans for 2007 include the development of a 3D product model-based General Arrangement and Classification module, a Weld Management module and a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) module; all based around the ShipConstructor Product Model Database.