Accelerating U.S. maritime competitiveness with a digital-shipyard model
The challenge facing American shipbuilding is not simply one of capacity. It is also a challenge of modernization.
America needs more domestic shipbuilding capacity. It needs shipyards capable of delivering commercial and defense vessels more efficiently, with greater quality and predictability. Yet rebuilding capacity does not require reinventing shipbuilding from scratch. Allied shipbuilding leaders already possess decades of practical experience operating some of the world's most advanced shipyards.
HD Hyundai brings exactly that experience.
As one of the world's leading shipbuilders, HD Hyundai's shipyards demonstrate what is possible when engineering, planning, production, and automation operate as a connected system. Rather than asking U.S. shipbuilders to pioneer an unproven approach, this collaboration provides access to manufacturing practices and digital operating models that have already been refined through the construction of hundreds of commercial vessels.
Siemens has likewise worked alongside HD Hyundai since 2022 on next-generation shipbuilding platforms designed to create a unified digital thread across design, engineering, and production environments.
We now have the opportunity to combine proven global shipbuilding expertise with American industrial innovation and manufacturing strength.
Instead of relocating manufacturing offshore, our collaboration with HD Hyundai helps bring proven manufacturing practices, digital processes, and investment into U.S. shipyards. Our vision is to establish a repeatable digital shipyard framework that can support established shipbuilders, emerging maritime manufacturers, and the suppliers that make up the broader industrial base.
At the center of this effort is Siemens Xcelerator, which serves as the digital backbone connecting engineering, planning, manufacturing, and operations through a common data environment. By creating a shared digital thread across the lifecycle of a maritime vessel, shipbuilders can create and test a complete digital twin before steel is ever cut—identifying bottlenecks, improving first-time quality and making better decisions before physical work begins.
That combination of operational expertise and industrial technology provides a pathway toward a stronger, more reliable U.S. shipbuilding industry while supporting broader objectives around supply chain resilience, industrial security and economic growth.
Building the maritime workforce needed for the next era of U.S. shipbuilding
This technology partnership also addresses one of shipbuilding's most significant challenges: its skilled labor shortage.
According to recent McKinsey research, the U.S. maritime industry will require an additional 200,000 to 250,000 workers over the next decade to meet projected commercial and naval shipbuilding demand. Many shipyards already struggle to recruit skilled labor, while others face growing retirement-driven knowledge loss among experienced workers.
Industrial AI doesn't just help address the workforce shortage. It changes the equation by reducing repetitive and hazardous tasks while elevating the skills of American workers.
By connecting engineering, planning and production through a common digital thread, digital shipyards improve workforce productivity. Engineers can evaluate design alternatives in virtual environments before construction begins. Production teams can visualize workflows before implementation. Managers can make faster decisions using trusted operational data.
The result is that every skilled professional—from naval architects to planners to production supervisors to welders—can spend more time designing and building and less time solving preventable problems.
Digital shipyards also help capture institutional knowledge. As experienced personnel retire—about 27% of the U.S. maritime workforce is age 55 or older—best practices can be maintained within digital models, simulation environments and connected workflows, helping accelerate training and onboarding for future generations of maritime workers. This creates a more attractive, technology-enabled working environment while strengthening workforce continuity across decades.
Siemens is dedicated to strengthening the U.S. workforce through our broader commitment to train 200,000 electricians and manufacturing technicians by 2030, reflecting our belief that workforce development is essential to America's long-term competitiveness.
Looking toward the next horizon
Rather than serving a single shipyard, the companies intend to develop reusable modernization approaches, digital transformation roadmaps and scalable digital shipyard solutions that can be adapted for commercial and defense shipbuilders throughout the United States.
In that sense, this partnership is not only about today's vessels. It is about establishing the technological foundation for the next era of American maritime leadership.
The modernization of U.S. shipbuilding will not happen overnight. America's competitiveness will depend not simply on developing AI, but on deploying it in shipyards, factories and production systems where it delivers measurable results. Partnerships like this provide a blueprint for how that happens.
As shipyards become increasingly connected, every vessel, design iteration, and production cycle will generate valuable new data. Through Siemens Xcelerator, those novel datasets can continuously improve digital twin applications, strengthen industrial AI models, and reveal new opportunities to optimize engineering, manufacturing, and operations.
Over time, those insights will help guide the next generation of shipbuilding innovation—enabling smarter decisions, faster execution and greater maritime competitiveness. And with every successful deployment, we move closer to a future in which American shipbuilding once again becomes a global benchmark for industrial excellence.
Published: July 23, 2026
