Cedric Cheylan

Cedric Cheylan French

I graduated in 1995 from the  Ecole Centrale de Nantes with an engineering degree, specializing in shipbuilding engineering.

I first worked for a short time in the design office of a French sailship yard based in the north of France. I was there involved in the final development of a new model.
After this short experience, I joined DECATHLON Production, the design and production subsidiary of the sports specialized department store. My position there was Product Process Manager. I was responsible for all windsurfing sails and harnesses and kites products lines, representing a yearly turnover of 5.5 M€. This position was not exactly corresponding to my naval engineering skills but was highly formative in product design and in project management. My first main task on each product was, according to the commercial department target, to design the product -or to manage the designer for some specific products. Then I was responsible, in relationship with the different production subsidiaries in each country, to choose the suppliers and subcontractors. This gave me the opportunity to travel in many countries ­ some in Europe and mainly in China, Hong-Kong, Taiwan and Korea to audit the different suppliers and then make the decision to choose the best one. At the end of the process, I was responsible for industrialization and follow-up of production and delivery planning.
I worked then for an engineering company as project manager for various topics, for example a radio controlled ship of around 40 meters long dedicated to carry targets for missiles trials or an expertise to bring back into service a 60m long high speed passenger vessel.
I am working today and since 2001 for DCNS, the European leading player on the world market for naval defence systems. I assumed there several positions in the engineering division. I was at first responsible for the detail design of hull structure of frigates and parts of submarines. This position consists in managing a technical team and subcontractors in charge of designing and drawing up the 3D CAD model of the ships structure in relationship with the yard that have to build the hull. This position gave me a good skill in designing structure and gave me a good vision of the production side. In addition I became in charge of defining and updating methods and process for the department. I moved then to the preliminary design team. I am there in charge of preliminary design of hull structure and some outfitting of surface ships. Today I am responsible of the team in charge of these studies for all surface ships. This position in which we handle bids and many R&D projects let me to be really creative and to convert a technical specification into a real ship. In the coming days I will enlarge my responsibility by managing as well the team in charge of preliminary general arrangement of the surface ships. Handling at the same time the general arrangement and the hull structure of ships will give be a global view on the ship designing process.
The various positions I practised up to today, gave me the opportunity to see different countries and different people. This allowed me to learn things and practise my skills in various technical and management domains. Each week I still learn new things and continue to develop myself.