Bridging the gap: a review of simulation approaches in multipurpose Shipyard integrating shipbuilding, repair, and recycling

Shipyards increasingly combine shipbuilding, repair, and recycling within shared facilities, yet most simulation research still treats these activities separately, limiting support for operational integration and lifecycle-oriented decision-making. Multipurpose shipyards in emerging maritime economies face challenges in coordinating shared docks, cranes, and labour under changing market conditions and sustainability pressures. This study reviews how simulation has been applied across shipbuilding, repair, and recycling, and assesses whether existing models support integrated multipurpose yard operations. A systematic review following the PRISMA guidelines analysed 215 peer-reviewed (2003–2024) from Web of Science and Scopus, coded by activity focus, simulation paradigm, integration scope, and research objectives. Results show 88 % of studies concentrate on shipbuilding, 7 % on repair, and 2 % on recycling, with only 3.7 % addressing multiple activities and none representing all three concurrently in a unified simulation architecture. Discrete Event Simulation dominates, while hybrid, Digital Twin, and lifecycle-oriented approaches remain limited, particularly for shared resource and sustainability applications. The review identifies six major gaps: activity integration, resource conflict resolution, prioritisation, trade-offs, lifecycle links, and decarbonisation. It contributes a comparative taxonomy of simulation paradigms and a five-layer framework that linking physical resources, processes, integration mechanisms, decision support, and learning/adaptation to guide future multipurpose simulation research.