Hydro Marine Aluminium's friction stir welding (FSW) machine is tailor-made for production of large panel solutions to the transport market. This enables the different customers to produce their structures more cost- and time- effectively than before by building with larger segments. The FSW process [1,2] produces panels by joining specially designed extrusions together into panels free from residual stresses, and have given a major cost saving for further fabrication at customer site. It also makes our own production more effective in building parts of ship sections and offshore modules by prefabricated FSW panels. Further information can be found at Hydro Marine Aluminium's web-site www.ham.no. In connection to an upgrading of our FSW production line, the combination of different process- and design- models, together with metallurgy competence and fabrication experience, has resulted in an increase in nominal weld speed of up to 400% for some aluminium. profile thickness ranges. The paper discusses how these technologies successfully have been coupled to achieve this quantum leap in production efficiency in our FSW fabrication line. This has given us a good base to further optimising the operations, market and technology development towards a growing maritime and transport market where the total cost and delivery time is more essential than ever.