As part of its modernization investments, FMM installed a ship lift system capable of moving vessels up to 10,000 tons safely into the water.
Hanging on the wall inside the lobby of Fincantieri Marinette Marine are mounted newspaper articles immortalizing the shipyard’s storied existence in Marinette, which dates back to 1942. Among them is a clipping from 2020, the year the U.S. Navy selected FMM to build its Constellation-class frigates. It was a watershed moment for the shipyard and the community around it.
Six years later, the plaque is a bittersweet reminder that things have changed.
In November, U.S. Navy Secretary John Phelan announced a “strategic shift away” from the $20 billion Constellation‑class program. Instead, the Navy would accept just two frigates currently under construction at FMM, canceling the four remaining on contract.
Fincantieri employs roughly 3,000 people across its three Wisconsin shipyards. About 1,000 are employed at the shipyard in Marinette County, where 29% of all jobs are in manufacturing.
“This is a blow to our state’s economy and our national security,” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin wrote in a social media post on X. “Thousands of skilled workers support this critical program, and this administration is pulling the rug out from under them. [The Navy Secretary] must lay out a plan to protect Wisconsin’s shipbuilding industry immediately.”
Italian-owned Fincantieri is one of the largest shipbuilders in the world with 18 shipyards across three continents. It acquired the Marinette shipyard in 2009 and has invested $800 million across the state, with nearly half of that dedicated to modernization improvements that have transformed its three Wisconsin shipyards into digital‑first, high‑efficiency production centers — those investments helped FMM win the initial Constellation contract.
Moutafis
George Moutafis, CEO of Fincantieri Marine Group, the firm’s U.S. subsidiary, says discussions with the Navy are ongoing. On Feb. 18 the Navy announced that FMM will construct four of the Marine Corps’ new Medium Landing Ships (LSM).
“It is important in this tight window for the Navy now to make the best possible use of these tier‑one level capabilities and capacity that we have in our Wisconsin operations,” Moutafis says, “not just for the 3,000 households that are directly linked to our Wisconsin operation [and] the broader network of supply chain that we have in the Great Lakes region, but because the nation needs it. Everybody has been rallying around the cry that we need more in terms of shipbuilding and maritime industrial base. The Navy, Coast Guard and the rest need us to build many more units.”
He emphasizes that technology and innovation are central to the shipbuilder’s future strategy, regardless of which vessels are being built in its yards. In addition to massive investments already made in augmented reality, virtual reality, robotics and automation, Moutafis says plans are in the works to implement full digitalization of yards similar to what is being done across Fincantieri’s global locations.
“We have examples from across the ocean of fully digitalized yards, and there’s a plan to bring that type of layout into our Wisconsin yards,” Moutafis says. “Our plan is to do it in the next couple of years, irrespective of the evolution in terms of our workload.”
“At first glance you can see why folks would assume [cobots] were going to replace the welder,” Chief of Shipyard Operations Rick Nutt says. “When in reality it allows a welder to use a tablet and not have their face or body in close proximity to the heat and smoke.”
Increasing speed and efficiency
When the Navy Secretary shared a video on X announcing the cancellation of the Constellation class frigate program, he emphasized the need for increased shipbuilding speed.
“A key factor in this decision is the need to grow the fleet faster to meet tomorrow’s threats,” Phelan said in the video. “This framework puts the Navy on a path to more rapidly construct new classes of ships and deliver the capability our warfighters need in greater numbers and on a more urgent timeline.”
One way efficiency has been addressed at Fincantieri is through a modular “system of yards” approach mirroring European production methods where multiple facilities work in coordination to enable greater flexibility for complex ship construction.
Ship sections are built simultaneously at FMM and its sister yards in Sturgeon Bay and Green Bay. The sections are transported by barge and then joined together in Marinette.
“That dramatically shortens the duration of building a ship when we can build the entire two pieces in parallel to each other,” says Chief of Shipyard Operations Rick Nutt.
In addition, FMM has invested in an enclosed, sequential building-to-building process that insulates production from weather-related delays, to which many other shipyards are subject. Ships are made in serial production, with typically seven under simultaneous construction.
Automation is also compressing build times, and the gains are still accelerating.
Nutt says a ship’s physical construction almost always starts at a robotic panel line which has been in place at FMM for about five years, but its real efficiency gains have only materialized within the last year.
“When you first implement new technology like this, you got to learn it and you got to become proficient before you can become efficient,” he says. “But now we’re getting that familiarity and understanding of the system, the tools and its limitations that [have] removed a lot of waste and variation in the process.”
Since the team has mastered the automated panel line, a process that once took 30 days has been cut roughly in half.
“When you’ve cut 15 days or more out of a panel, and there’s hundreds of panels in a ship, that really reduces the total time needed to build the ship,” Nutt says.
Wearable exoskeleton
Tech investments for the future
Technology such as wearable exoskeletons, advanced robotics and digital twin architecture are improving workforce safety and productivity at the Marinette shipyard.
Marrying new technology with traditional craftsmanship is a workforce strategy as well as necessary for the industry’s future, Moutafis says.
“Younger folks see that combination as really exciting, because they feel that they are the shipbuilders of tomorrow. In reality, they’re also drivers of how we will evolve shipbuilding,” he says.
For example, cobots, or collaborative robots, aren’t meant to replace welders. They require skilled welders to teach them. Cobots allow human workers to use tablets instead of torches and keep them away from heat, fumes and physical strain, dramatically lowering the barrier for new workers.
“There’s an entire segment of the workforce that would have never in a million years thought about becoming professional welders in a shipyard,” Nutt says. “But they can literally now go from working in a hotel lobby or a grocery store and use the same methodology to navigate that dashboard.”
Another emerging technology at FMM is digital twin architecture that mirrors each vessel virtually in real time. Workers can overlay a 3D design model onto a partially‑built module through AR headsets, helping them catch missing components, interference conflicts and sequencing issues before they become costly rework.
Engineer Technician Brock Jersey says the AR technology helps spot these problems before they happen, which has been a big timesaver.
“To be able to be in the completed module long before the module is completed, and identify those future pain points is really interesting,” he says.
But the practical benefits extend beyond error-catching, Jersey says.
“It used to take somebody a long time to go out with a paper print and do a check on a module for completion,” he says. “Now we can turn layers on and off and see stuff that would be far too busy to put on 2D documents.”
Those types of ground-level gains reflect the shipyard’s broader technology strategy, Moutafis says. So while the newspapers on the wall mark where FMM has been, the technology investments underway signal where it’s going.
“We continuously work on that next wave and that includes a lot of technological innovation,” Moutafis says. “Honestly, we’ve been doing it and it’s agnostic of Constellation class or no Constellation class.”
