Damen Shipyards is charting a course toward a more intelligent, sustainable maritime future with SAP.

The Netherlands-based, family-owned maritime group has been building vessels since 1927 and today operates internationally with more than 12,500 people and over 35 yards across six continents. With an ambition to become the world’s most sustainable maritime solution provider, Damen is combining its long-standing craftsmanship with innovation, digitalization, and operational excellence.

Smarter Shipbuilding with SAP Business AI

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After investing heavily in SAP S/4HANA as its core ERP foundation, Damen is now focused on applying SAP Business AI to extend the impact of that platform.

“We really would like to harvest the business value of that initial investment,” said Han Coenraad, product manager ERP at Damen. “We use AI, especially in our operational processes, to get things running more smoothly and support more data-driven decision-making.”

Damen has enabled SAP Joule for Consultants and SAP Joule for Developers and is exploring conversational capabilities that allow employees to interact with SAP systems and processes using natural language.

Looking ahead, Damen sees opportunities to use embedded and custom AI use cases to improve data quality, enhance operational processes, and help teams work faster and closer to customers.

One example is using AI to support parts sales engineers by reading customer documents from email and automatically transferring the right information into sales orders. The goal, Coenraad explained, is to “build vessels sooner, with lower costs and more customer satisfaction.”

Inspired by SAP Sapphire and the vision of the Autonomous Enterprise, Damen is ready for the next step: “The strategy shift from SAP—we are really looking forward to it and we really embrace it. Let’s make that happen.”