​As part of its effort to modernise and optimise ship yards, Navy is in the early stages of work site simulation plans, meant to show potential new layouts of the yards’ welding shops, pump shops, material storage, office spaces and more could contribute to better workflow and reduced man hours.

The Shipyard Infrastructure Optimisation Plan effort will also include repairing and enhancing dry docks and replacing aging capital equipment, but the Navy hopes to hash out the layout issues early on to avoid installing large capital equipment and then having to move it a few years later.

“The Shipyard Infrastructure Optimisation Plan articulated a vision that shipyard infrastructure has three interdependent components: the dry docks, the facilities and the capital equipment; and that these configurations are fundamentally linked to the shipyards’ ability to execute the mission they are tasked to do..

“We are utilising modeling and simulation as a tool to integrate these components to better inform the desired infrastructure layout. Through this, the Navy will be in a better position to make meaningful, long-lasting investments that not only address the condition of the facilities and equipment but also change the way the work is conducted. Once we’re finished, the Navy will recover more than several hundred thousand work days per year, every year.”

A first step is the Digital Twin effort, where the yards as they exist today will be put into a modeling and simulation system that can then generate numerous options to optimise work flow.

We have designed a notional new design for the yard running simulations on transit times for various types of personnel to understand what shops, offices and other facilities need to be located near what other facilities to help optimise travel flow.

The impact of each worker having to walk an inefficient path from location to location to do their job may seem minute, but when multiplied by the total workforce over the span of a maintenance availability, an inefficient yard design can extend the amount of time it takes to repair a ship quite a bit.

The workforce walks the circumference of the earth every day getting to and from the worksite. 5% inefficiency in their time spent walking around the yard could be eliminated with a more appropriate flow from the shops down to the drydocks.

Workers train weekly to maintain readiness, so when the call comes to get the job done, they are prepared. “This trainer allows firefighters to work in virtual controlled environment that detects whether agent is applied correctly to extinguish fires. The trainer mimics the heat a firefighter feels and presents a multitude of fire scenarios, to include building and aircraft fires.”

Not only is the simulator safer, but it is also more cost effective and easier to use. Now firefighters do not have to load up their rigs with equipment, water, gas and wear heavy equipment when training. They are able to train in their training rooms without leaving the facility.

The simulator consists of a head monitor display, nozzle and protective gear. The computer central processing unit is in the simulated firefighter air tank system that the individual places on their back. This simulated tank is much lighter than what the firefighters would normally wear during a call.    

“Lightweight means less physical stress . Our vehicles, and equipment stay in-service, allowing for faster responses to real world emergencies that occur while we’re training. While the simulator allows skill sharpening in a safe environment, the authenticity of a real fire is the best way to learn.

“There’s no substitute for fighting real fires. “In order to do what we do, we have to know how fire is going to react when you introduce something new to that environment - water, foam, ventilation, etc. If you apply any of those examples in the wrong way, you could end up with accidents.

We’re confident that transparently laying out those upcoming challenges will encourage industry to make the right investments in their infrastructure and workforce and avoid further ship maintenance troubles in the coming decades.

Today, the Navy does not have enough dry docks at its disposal to care for cruisers, destroyers and Littoral Combat Ships. A mismatch in the number of ships and number of dry docks is one issue; ships coming into the yards late due to deployment extensions and ships coming out of repairs late due to unplanned work popping up exacerbate the situation.

“When we looked at it, we had spent a lot of time analyzing and building the 30-year shipbuilding plan, which gave the industrial base a real clear signal on what was to come and then they could start making capital investment decisions. We were less clear and less transparent about the repair work.”

“And that, in combination with kind of awarding each ship repair individually, was causing us to sub-optimise performance. So the purpose of the plan was to make sure we were very clear with the Navy, with Congress, with all of our industrial partners, the workload coming forward and then get better at planning the work, which would allow our industrial partners to get more efficient at executing the work.”

The long-range plan does multiple things. First, it lays out the expected workload for the repair and modernisation industry based on anticipated ship inventory. Identifying the number of availabilities, the number of man hours, and the dollar value of the work helps both industry leaders and Navy planners see the wave of work coming in terms that make sense to them.

It also outlines ongoing initiatives with the ship yards to help address today’s maintenance backlogs by investing in the yards’ layout and capital equipment to create a more efficient place to do ship repairs and upgrades. The plan looks to create better workload stability and thereby be able to use new contracting models that promote efficiency and on-time delivery of ships.

Today, the Navy awards contracts an average of 90 days before the start of a maintenance availability, limiting yards’ ability to hire new people or rearrange their workload to accommodate a new ship. Our goal is to bring that average to 180 days to allow for better planning. 

We have already reduced the number of inspections associated with ship maintenance work by 30 percent and hope to eventually bring that down to 50 percent. We are also increasing on-the-scene leaders’ ability to approve changes to the work package once an availability starts, helping to curtail what can be lengthy pauses in work while the approval request goes up the chain of command.

Better business practices will help ships get in and out of maintenance in a timelier manner, as well as encourage industry to spend money on yard and workforce investments that will be pivotal to the Navy’s and industry’s ability to keep up with demand in the next few decades.

“Our on-time availability is improving out of both the public and the private yards, but it’s not yet to the point where we need it to be. We’re starting to see performance improve. We’re starting to see we’re using shipyards we hadn’t used previously. As noted, the demand is there, the challenge is to meet that demand as efficiently as we can with the right acquisition strategy.”

The service is in talks with shipyards that have existing dry docks capacity to see if they want to do business with the Navy leaders who are offering to certify facilities before companies even bid on any repair contracts to reduce the risk the yard takes and to grow the field of possible repair yards. The Navy has also spoken previously of talking to industry to gauge any interest in existing yards adding new dry docks.

Despite the efforts to find more dry docks to work with, it’s unlikely the Navy will increase its dry dock capacity by 60 percent to keep up with the 60-percent increase in ships needing them. Business practice improvements are going to make up for some the difference, but Navy needs to take additional measures going forward to deal with the upcoming surge in surface ship maintenance needs, 

When we’ve looked at it, industry responds to the demand signal we put out there. We were not clear in showing the composite demand signal, so a key element of that 30-year maintenance plan was so we could show the entire demand signal. Our experience has been, when we clearly articulate the demand, industry makes really good decisions on how to invest to help us deliver on that demand.

You have to fight with the fleet you have now. There is no other option; it is a necessity. Our Goal is to do that better and to lay the groundwork for the future fleet by focusing upon availability of assets. We have identified two principal Questions. First, how do we get our availability rates higher? Second, how do we get ships to the fight more effectively and more often? The essential assets required to fight and win are not going to make much difference sitting in Job Site Drydocks. We can provide for enhanced deterrence through enhanced availability. They are not going deter anybody if they are not available and capable of going to sea..

We have put a major effort in getting much greater availability from many of our ships, and the ways we have done so will shape our approach, our expectations and our template for the operation of the new ship classes. We have seen a dramatic improvement in our upgrade and maintenance programmes. For example, out maintenance engineering planning programme is already doing a better job of predicting the maintenance needs of specific ship hulls and should continue getting more accurate over the next few years.

We put as much effort into infrastructure design as we did into combat readiness, which is about numbers today. We want to shape infrastructure that is all about availability of assets required for mission success, and not just readiness determined with poorly designed metrics. Getting the right infrastructure to generate fleet innovation on a sustained basis is what is crucial for mission success. We are strongly promoting continuous build processes.

We have established technical foundation instructions that look at each class of ship and, based on where a hull is in its service life and what type of maintenance availability it is approaching, outlines what type of work the ship is likely to need. Instructions for each individual hull and monitors of deferred maintenance are active, in addition to other things engineering teams need to know about that particular ship..

The job sites at the Yards have created learning centers to help new hires become proficient at their trades faster so cases of schedule delays and cost increases due to workforce challenges will be less of a budgeting problem going forward. We want the trainers there, as well, so that when we’re maintaining one part of the system deployed in theatre, it’s the same people in the same building maintaining those things that will allow us to make future decisions about outdated operations and training requirements. We want these teams sitting next to each other and learning together.

Once all the ships have been through a docking availability, where they are more thoroughly taken apart and inspected, we will have a very clear idea of the state of each ship and what to expect for future maintenance periods. We anticipate the problem of work package growth will be reduced in the future but it will probably never completely go away. There is always something that will surprise us when you take a pump off of a foundation that you couldn’t see before and then that foundation is eroding.

The good news is that we anticipate work growth when drafting plans for future years out, and they generally can stay within that margin. Where we see growth today is still on ships that have not gone through that process, that docking process, and really getting into the tanks and understanding what those conditions are. It is a constantly improving process with the goal to know exactly what the condition of the ship is so we can properly plan for it, order the materiel and be able to do the work on schedule and on time.

We have initiated periodic meetings with each shipyard commander to get an update on progress of the ships and to find ways to empower the yards to do what it takes to deliver the ships on-time or early. It’s to get a quick update on where they are, where they’re having challenges, and then where can headquarters can provide help in terms of, do you need our help in getting materiel, do you need our help in clearing some technical issues that you need adjudicated before you can get back to testing. So that’s all begun to contribute to success of operations.

There are things we can do up at headquarters to advance quality of operations, if it’s a technical issue we can give them additional technical resources. We can provide them some focused effort from the headquarters; if our chief engineer sitting there with the shipyard commander brings an issue up, it cuts through the normal layers that these things have to get through. It has fostered key ingredients for the future fleet, most importantly that time matters, and there must always be a sense of urgency since ships need to get back to the fight as soon as possible.

We cannot overstate enough the importance of periodic reviews because we aren’t about to claim we are the reason these things have gotten better, but review do in fact provide the shipyard commanders with an additional level of a sense of urgency, that we have established a mechanism to get headquarters’ attention; that headquarters is there to support each worker at the yard; that if they’ve come up against a roadblock that they’re having a problem getting solved, then we can muster some resources to get the issue solved probably quicker than they can get the problem fixed in the normal way. We want to create better supervisors at the Deckplate, and initiatives are being put in place to train new hires more quickly so it is possible to start contributing to the workload even before they’re qualified to work on the ship.

Many availabilities that experience problems, on the other hand, are much more complex. The biggest factor is that many availabilities take much longer than anticipated, not due to unexpected maintenance work but rather because modernisation work suddenly started driving schedules. Modernisation, in the past, has generally not been a driver for schedule in availabilities – they mostly have been specific to particular parts of the ship, or particular machinery, or some capability like that.

We’re now getting into modernisation that really takes the ship apart completely. The scope and duration of some systems installation are now understood to some degree, but often times we will not know until between that budget process and the beginning of the year. We have shifted some of the money over to help address all those challenges – though ultimately the shortfall is about the same size now as it was at the beginning of the fiscal year.

The fact that the deficit hasn’t shrunk much over the last period isn’t for lack of trying, though. We had begun awarding firm fixed-priced contracts for surface ships instead of the old multi-ship/multi-option setup. Preliminary observations shows that costs are coming down, freeing up money to spend on other emerging ship maintenance work.

But sometimes we find ourselves facing a big unplanned bill this fiscal year when ships return from a deployment that was not only extended for a significant period but was also essentially the second in a back-to-back deployment with only bare-bones maintenance work in between.

We have been warning Congress for years that extended deployments since have led to more severe maintenance problems when ships can finally go into an availability. Insufficient time and funding have led to partial completions of the work in some cases, which then creates bigger problems down the road – for example, tank inspections get skipped and then we have to deal with major corrosion issues later on.

What we’re seeing now with the actual testing of equipment prior to the availability, the additional work the ships are tasked with over the course of deployment, we’re seeing a lot more work now coming into that package. The consequences are manifested in an availability that will be much bigger than we anticipated.

So as we grow the size of the workforce and we go look at all the ship work we have on the plate we’re trying to get out in front far enough in advance so we can go to the fleet commanders, telling them don’t have the capacity at the naval shipyards, and then we can go talk to industry earlier than we’ve typically done before. If you look at the list of ships out there, there are several cases where looking into the future we may have to go to industry earlier than we’ve done today.

In some years, Pentagon-level reprogramming can take money from other Service acquisition programmes, but most of the time we cannot get money from the other services for the year to cover shortfalls. Due to funding shortfalls, we have reduced contract support levels, intermediate level repairs, and ability to provide after-hours support in specific areas. Although extensive efforts have been expended to limit adverse impact to the ships undergoing maintenance, fiscal realities have forced us into these actions.

Specifically, we are forced to stop engineering support to include tank and void inspections, infrared surveys, underway vibration analysis and surface ship availability work certifications. Reduction in parts procurement means a stop to all major diesel work, surface ship torpedo tube repairs and refurbishment, air compressor overhauls, communication receiver and transmitter repairs, and repairs to electronic warfare and anti-ship missile decoy systems. When supplies of on hand materiel run out, repairs to additional systems will be impacted.

Delaying maintenance periods, pressing them into the next fiscal year with the budget currently under consideration not being optimal, affects even the smallest number of ships, impacting the final decision on how to deal with the operations and maintenance shortfall. We do not want to embark on a path that partially accomplishes all availabilities across the entire fleet. That is a dangerous practice that rapidly builds maintenance and capability backlogs that are difficult to recover. Indeed, we are still digging out from that sort of policy implemented more than a decade ago that is difficult to recover from.

The fleet takes on operational risk when it has less than full operations and maintenance funding, meaning acceptance of less readiness across the whole of the Fleet, less capacity to surge in crisis, or perhaps living with reduced readiness in our ships that would keep them from reaching the end of their service lives. In any case, recovering from these situations will cost us more in time and money in the future, limiting utility of the Force.

1. How do you fight with the fleet you have and prepare at the same time for tomorrow’s fleet, especially when you have several new programmes in the pipeline?

2. How do you execute initial steps to a successful maintenance availability like proper planning, determining what people and materiel will be needed at each step along the way?

3. By learning how to ramp up availability with today’s fleet, are you preparing solid templates for future operations?

4. Several months before the availability starts, do you commit to having a resource plan --in other words, these are the people you need, when you’re going to need them, so you can finish on time?

5.  Isn’t one broad aspect of changes you are responsible for clearly setting out solid goals for build/upgrade the Fleet of the 21st Century?

6. Isn’t it important for you to have periodic calls with each shipyard commanders to get updates on progress and find ways to empower the yards to do what it takes to deliver on-time?

7. How important in your view is building a new shipyard training infrastructure to support a 21st century combat force?

8. If you have work backlog, how do you plan to move availabilities around so you have workers with the capacity to do work?

9. Overtime is one of must important factors to adjust, but isn’t it difficult for you to fine-tune how many man-days of work get accomplished without taking major workforce shortages into account?
​
10. So it is apparent your focus is on advanced planning, the growth in the workforce, worker-efficiency initiatives and more—how do you plan to achieve success in these areas?

​Does “Digital Twin” hype have your head spinning about the mission space of the future and connectivity of tomorrow’s equipment? Tired of suppliers trying to pitch you new, interconnected “Digital Twin” equipment that operates the same way, same speed?

Welcome to the “Digital Twin” No-Spin Zone. Workshop solutions all non-invasively upgrade today’s equipment today, so you can monitor and be aware of upcoming service issues within critical mission systems.

Workshop makes it super simple and inexpensive to upgrade your existing equipment with easily attached component and electrical sensors that monitor critical systems and assets. With Workshop, you’ll know exactly what’s going on with today’s machines, so you’ll avoid unplanned downtime and dramatically increase productivity and profits.

Workshop’s affordable solutions let you look into the future to predict machine malfunction and failure.
Workshop sensors are placed directly on your machines or components to automatically monitor condition. The sensor data transmits to an easy-to-install gateway and is then sent to cloud servers running powerful analytic software. Results are transmitted from the server to a user-friendly app, where you will view real time machine condition and maintenance advice.

Far beyond the monitoring capabilities and trending packages being touted by new entrants to the field of predictive maintenance and analytics, Workshop products ‘listen’ to key assets and components to detect changing health and operating conditions long before the machine controller issues a warning or alarm condition.

Machine control data typically only shows process data. Workshop actually analyzes the data from vital machine components, such as gearboxes, heaters, pumps and more.

The Workshop prescriptive maintenance solution provides actionable maintenance advice and allows you to schedule maintenance at a convenient time rather than suffer a costly shut down.

Power Analyzer diagnoses everyday electrical problems including costly issues that can result in lengthy downtime such as motor burnout, control and display memory loss, and failing transformers, capacitors and more.

Workshop Power Analyzer uses patented local cloud-based analytics technology to capture, interpret and diagnose the data obtained from electrical components and internal power distribution.

Easy-to-understand dashboard gauges warn users of pending failure of stator windings, motor bearings and heaters as well as all common power line issues such as sag, swell, harmonics, ground faults and imbalances.
The data is presented in a manner that it is easily understood by personnel regardless of any electrical engineering experience. Every manufacturer has electrical issues. These issues can, and will, affect productivity, machine performance and electrical costs.

Workshop Power Analyzer technology is designed to help diagnose everyday electrical issues and present them in a way that can be easily understood by maintenance and management alike, regardless of experience on electrical components and related issues.

All Workshop products work in conjunction with Digital Twin Package that provides a factory dashboard of all connected assets. Through the Tools the user can set up alarms and alarm recipients.

Historic data is available through equipment performance trend lines. And, a streamlined dashboard interface delivers a clear summary of the powerful analytics for all monitored equipment, neatly organised by department and location.

Tool offers easy-to-understand diagnostic and actionable maintenance advice via text or email messages and handheld or desktop dashboards, in advance of machine or component failure. No manual data analysis is required.

The Workshop Vacuum Pump Analyzer monitors operating condition and trend health of pumps and blowers in various industrial applications. The Vacuum Pump Analyzer sensors easily attach to the pump exterior and constantly measure vibration and vacuum, plus ambient temperature and pressure. A plug-in connection reliably powers the sensor, unlike competitive units that rely on batteries for power.

Workshop Vacuum Pump Digital Twin tracks and compares the collected data against a baseline to determine overall pump health. Filter status, oil status, pump utilisation and vacuum or pressure level trends are all constantly monitored. Visualisation of valuable operating metrics is delivered through easy-to-understand mobile and desktop dashboards

The easy-to-install Workshop Component Analyzer constantly tracks the operating condition and trend health of rotating components in industrial machinery. Easy-to-understand icons direct users to view component health trends displaying months of operating history.

Customisable threshold values allow users to identify preferred maintenance conditions, unhealthy operating conditions, or deteriorated component health.

Time-domain data sampling methods enable continuous trend monitoring to spot anomalies and repeatable events that occur under changing process or operating conditions, allowing early detection of developing component health issues, and the operating trends that may be causing them. Traditional Frequency-Domain data and analytics add enhanced diagnosis capabilities for bearing and gearbox faults initially, with other device libraries being added each month. 

Visualisation of key operating and analytic results are conveniently delivered 24/7 via web browser or mobile app in easy-to-understand dashboard gauges, and via email/text alerts. No advanced training or expertise is needed.
In the manufacturing world, improving the utilisation of assets and increased productivity are among the most important goals. Reliable assets reduce downtime, improve production quality and get product out the door faster.

The most effective approach is to use a predictive maintenance solution that readily installs to your existing equipment and has a powerful Digital Twin package that will collect data from your monitored equipment in real time, compare the data with established baselines, assess the condition of the equipment and use analytics to effectively manage maintenance activities.

With Workshop you’ll know exactly what’s going on with your machines so that you can avoid unplanned downtime and dramatically increase productivity and profits. Ask us how we can help implement a predictive maintenance program for you today!
​
“Rough Conditions in Maintenance Shops Place Risk on Potential for Successful Operational Missions”

Pilot on a routine training sortie when the aircraft’s engine caught fire and was forced to jettison fuel tanks and immediately return to base due to an engine issue originally stemming from incorrect practices and the “general disarray” of the base’s maintenance shop several years earlier, according to a Pentagon Report.

The primary cause of the incident was an obsolete part—a turbine frame forward fairing—that was installed on a brack that was not compatible several years early during a service life extension maintenance overhaul.. The part failed during the flight and caused the engine fire. Between the engine damage and the loss of the external tanks, the mishap was estimated to cost just several million. Routine inspections on the aircraft would not have caught the issue with the fairing, according to the report.

Through interviews with maintainers, the investigation board found that “poor enforcement of standard maintenance protocols” inside maintenance shop led to the improper completion of paperwork to ensure parts accountability, a severe disorganisation at the shop, improper handling of parts, and a failure to follow proper procedures for cannibalizing parts from other aircraft. 

When a new senior officer arrived, he found the shop in disarray and without organisation. “It was mix and match, with no standardisation of where things went,” the report states. “The shop had their own ‘method of the madness.’ 

Because things were in such disarray, the shop “received millions dollars” to revamp and get back to standards.

“Given the strict protocols governing how parts are ordered and installed, a preponderance of the evidence shows the poor enforcement of standard maintenance protocols several years back created an environment within the Propulsion Flight that was a substantially contributing factor to the order and installation of the obsolete forward fairing that caused the fire,” the report states.


The investigation into another crash found an uncommanded closure of the aircraft’s main fuel shutoff valve caused the crash. That investigation found that the maintenance squadron did not have a corrosion preventative compound, which was prescribed by a task order for the aircraft and could have helped prevent an uncommanded closure of the valve, 

Forecasting aircraft spare parts requirements typically calculate ratio of future flying hours to past flying hours for the aircraft using a specific part and then applying ratio to historical demand for part. We conclude this technique results in bad estimates mostly because 1) correlation of specific parts to specific aircraft types is not accurate, 2) does not base projections on many combinations of aircraft employing part, and 3) does not incorporate influence of lengthy procurement times into future flying-hours estimate

Because things were in such disarray, the shop “received  millions dollars” to revamp and get back to standards.

“Given the strict protocols governing how parts are ordered and installed, a preponderance of the evidence shows the poor enforcement of standard maintenance protocols years earlier created an environment within the Propulsion Flight that was a substantially contributing factor to the order and installation of the obsolete forward fairing that caused the fire,” the report states.

Quality control during production is an important aspect of reducing cost caused by misaligned equipment or faulty equipment. When a machine is misaligned, operating incorrectly, or faulty, then parts or products produced by that piece of equipment may have poor fitting, tolerances that do not meet specifications, or incorrect yields for a desired product.

To better illustrate this, a tire production company uses a screw-compressor during their production that has a faulty oil filter that lets oil pass through it. When the oil passes through the filter, it gets carried through the pneumatic pressure pipes and finally begins to accumulate on the controllers and often damages them. The secondary issue is that oil is harmful to rubber and there is an oil limit of two parts per million that is allowed to pass through the filter. Using pressure sensors and the specification for differential pressures that the oil filter is rated for, the oil leak can be prevented by properly maintaining or replacing the filter.

Another example is the machine that begins the first stage of the tires formation. This machine has a long shaft that the tire is produced on. If the shaft has a misalignment, then defective tires are produced. By vibrational and gyroscopic analysis, the misalignment can be discovered, and the maintenance team will be notified so that they are able to quickly fix the issue.

Providing these notifications real-time during production allows operators and maintenance personnel to effectively communicate issues that reduce defective parts and downtime, ultimately reducing cost.

Test New Visual Inspection Procedure for Cold Sprayed Protective Coat/Wear Hydraulic Tubing Extends Aircraft Service Life

We recently completed an extensive effort to help certify a maintenance process that could extend the life of aircraft hydraulic system components. Through participation in a rapid innovation team, we successfully helped develop, test, and validate the cold spray coating process for the life extension of aircraft hydraulic lines. Cold spray is a technique by which metal particles are accelerated onto a surface through high-pressure application. 

The force of the impact bonds the metal to the surface without the need for temperatures as high as those typically associated with other deposition processes. This process was identified as a potential solution for replacement aircraft hydraulic lines, which are prone to chafing damage.

Aircraft hydraulic lines are made of titanium, a strong, lightweight metal that can be bent and routed around tight spaces without collapsing upon itself. These qualities make it ideal for aircraft hydraulic systems. However, titanium does have drawbacks. It is very a surface-sensitive material, meaning that any nick or scratch can be detrimental to its overall material properties. 

Because of the proximity of the hydraulic lines to landing gear components, chafing is a common occurrence, necessitating frequent inspection and replacement of hydraulic lines. This procedure is a costly and time-consuming endeavor. 

To alleviate this problem, the rapid innovation fund team began investigating the use of the cold spray process to apply a protective titanium layer to chafe-prone tubing areas. Behind this effort was notion the sacrificial titanium layer could endure considerable wear while preventing harm to the material beneath.

Certifying the process for implementation on the aircraft hydraulic tubes was a complex and multi-faceted effort included identifying shortfalls in the technology, developing process controls, establishing test plans and acceptance criteria, performing material analysis, and developing inspection techniques. 

The final step was approval by a change evaluation team. It was a tough task and one that required a thoughtful approach. “We knew we had to do this the right way, with safety first and make sure the use of this system met our acceptable risk levels and didn’t cause any unintended problems.”

Team began by developing a test plan that would meet all the necessary requirements for the aircraft. They also worked closely with aircraft maintainers and organisations who currently use the cold spray process for other applications. 

Because of the platform-specific conditions under which this process would be used, special factors needed to be considered. In many instances, the team needed to start from square one to collect and process new data, perform necessary calculations, and develop new procedures. 

At one point the team devised a new test procedure to ensure sufficient cold spray adhesion on the rounded surface of a tube versus the flat panels on which cold spray had been typically used. The team also had to take into consideration material integrity issues that can arise when using the cold spray process on titanium tubes.

“Titanium is very sensitive to temperature changes in the range in which cold spray is applied. Applying high heat to titanium tubes in an oxygen-rich environment causes a brittle crust—called alpha case—to form on the outside. Applying a protective coating to the titanium tubes would require a process that wouldn’t destroy their inherent material integrity.

“We developed a process in which we use helium as a carrier gas that displaces oxygen, so the brittle layer doesn’t have a chance to form on the tube.”

Throughout their investigation, team kept focus on maintainability. Since both the cold spray-applied protective coating and the underlying tubing materials are both titanium, it was very important to determine that field inspectors could discern between the protective layer and the tubing beneath. 

To test this, team developed visual test procedures and asked maintainers to inspect worn areas to ensure that they could determine the difference between the protective coating and the underlying titanium of the tube itself. 

“It’s a slight difference, but there are different levels of reflectivity. We wanted to make sure the inspectors could determine this.” The team developed an ultrasonic thickness inspection to serve as a backup inspection method once a potential problem area is identified.

After several years of painstaking research, collaboration, analysis, development, testing, validation, and verification, work was presented to change evaluation team, where the process was certified for use on the majority of the aircraft hydraulic system and systems in a number of other aircraft as well, should the use of this process be deemed necessary.

Use of the cold spray coating process will begin soon on all aircraft as a preventive measure that holds great promise in extending the serviceability of the aircraft’s hydraulic tubes.

“By using this process, maintainers can now allow a degree of wear to occur.  Now if we see damage due to chafing, as long as it does not affect base material, we can tolerate that damage, which can save significant time and money.

This painstaking effort exemplifies the critical role the team plays in the development, advancement, and safety of aircraft assets. “We’re here to ensure it gets done right.”


1. Implement tech and process from industry to map workflow. 

It’s recommended to begin the mapping effort at the very beginning of the maintenance process and the flow of the process from one step to the next. Once the map is done, eliminate as many of these extra maintenance steps as possible.

2.  Give machine operators process ownership. 

A number of real-time digital condition monitoring and reporting systems now support the positive trend to operator-driven reliability The Total Productive Maintenance approach shifts basic maintenance work and problem notification to machine operators, freeing up maintenance personnel to work on planned maintenance.

So workers have ownership of their machine and the process, maximise equipment effectiveness, increase workforce skills and reduce manufacturing costs through continuous monitoring. For their part, the maintenance team should respond to requests within a pre-determined time window.

3. Schedule your job site planned maintenance program far in advance.

Just as any other operation, it is essential to maximise productivity and meet order deadlines. Annual checks are going to be more comprehensive than a monthly or quarterly check, meaning the machine will be down for longer, so make sure they match up with your production commitments.

4. Use your resource planning system to plan for downtime.

Tie jobs in with the procurement function, and if properly described with consumption amounts and order lead times, maintenance parts will have been ordered in advance and arrive at job site in time for the machine to be serviced. Use your resource planning system to specify the maintenance mechanic who will work on the machine, and to specify the parts and chemicals needed to complete the maintenance activity.

5. Schedule more frequent checks for older equipment. 

As equipment ages, parts and components will start to wear out sooner, and the maintenance window narrows. What were annual checks when the equipment was new may move to semi-annual or even monthly. The service parts required will have to be ordered more often. However, the planned downtime will affect production schedules less than a breakdown.

6.  Engineer machine improvements for maintainability and operability. 

Windows cut into guarding to give easier viewing of gauges will make the daily checks easier to perform and more likely to be completed. Access doors installed on equipment will allow for easier periodic maintenance. Consolidation of lubrication points into a single manifold also contributes to more consistently performed maintenance.

7. Conduct daily operator walk-arounds to pinpoint issues and opportunities for improvement. 

Whether it’s a check sheet, whiteboard, or in some cases, a bar-coded activity, the operator’s checks are the essential element of a successful operation.

8. Address operator alerts immediately. 

Beyond the operator and the proper performance of the checks, the maintenance organisation must be ready to respond immediately to an abnormality that’s been raised as part of the operator checks. Nothing will take the energy of total productive maintenance efforts faster than operators raising issues that aren’t addressed immediately.

9. Continually review spare part requirements. 

Remove any spare parts from stock as equipment and machines are retired.

10  Document and continually re-visit your operation’s maintenance history

Include how critical items have been addressed. Develop and regularly review metrics that correlate equipment up and down time with production volume, quality and delivery. Whether using a computer-based maintenance system, or relying on a card file, or having a white board in the maintenance area, the strategies, opportunities and approaches remain the same.

​Advances in artificial intelligence have given rise to behavioural technologies capable of performing tasks that traditionally required intelligence of commanders in the field. Realising end-to-end digital enterprises, automating tasks and processes, and making smarter, faster decisions all require next frontier of technologies to transform the way agents and machines interact.

Must support realistic virtual Job Sites to test agent behaviours.. The architecture should support construction of very responsive physical and behavioural mission space and stand in for the challenging real world counterparts in which agents are designed to function. This is a particular strength of an architecture that incorporates state-of-the-art simulation capabilities.

Simulation Models are essential to giving orders directed at deploying complex interdependent systems and to communicate among team members and stakeholders.

Simulation provides a means to explore concepts, system characteristics and alternatives; open up the multi-agent trade space; facilitate informed decisions and assess overall system performance.

New technologies like automation and robotics, accompanied by upgrades to facilities and infrastructure, have enhanced productivity at Marine Corps Depots. As productivity and efficiency increase we are seeing corresponding decreases in labour, maintenance, and operational costs.

The depot readiness enterprise recently transitioned to business systems that use standard, industry recognised processes. The Logistics Modernisation Program is built on off-the-shelf tools for Resource Planning and shop floor integration.

These tools give us complete visibility on manufacturing and service operations, a capability we now have for the first time. These applications also help us improve the accuracy of our work orders; engage in more efficient production scheduling; enable interaction with our diverse vendor supply chain and reduce delays for parts.

These capabilities are increasing the speed at which materiel reaches the warfighter, and provides Marines with true “factory to foxhole” asset visibility/tracking. Depot enterprise is executing a number of supply chain initiatives to improve its effectiveness, including improving demand forecasting accuracy and imposing tougher performance standards on suppliers. These efforts create ability to purchase, manufacturer, and repair critical parts required to support warfighting equipment.

“Operators want to know capability has been fully characterised, so not only do they know what it does, but they know what it doesn’t do – equally important to them when they take it into combat.” 

“When we deliver that capability to them on Day 1 it’s fully integrated with the environment they’re expecting to utilise it in,  which is done poorly, and “give them a system on Day 1 that they can fully train with. Fully train with, 100-percent of the capability we’re giving them. 

Currently we’re telling them what it can do, but typically we also go, ‘don’t worry, your training system, your simulator tools, it’s an iteration or two behind, but it’ll catch up.’ Well, it usually doesn’t catch up because we keep rolling the operational tools but the training tools comes behind.”

Successful implementation of model-based systems engineering would solve the integration and training problems, as well as reduce the time and burden required to design, vet, redesign, and test and evaluate new planes, ships, weapons and more.

First, program offices need to sit down with operators and understand the requirement on a tactical level: what mission needs to be accomplished, what capability is needed, what threat is being countered, how will the system be used, who will use it, and more. If that information is all included in a computer model, NAVAIR can insert a notional placeholder aircraft or weapon into the model and pass it along to industry to actually engineer.

“We’ve got a model of the threat; we’ve got a model of our blue forces, we got environmental models, whether I’m operating in an electromagnetic warfare spectrum or in the acoustic spectrum under the water; it’s all done with models.” 

Reliability metrics captured through the maintenance process can be compared, using reliability modeling, to specified system reliability. Those components that are critical reliability drivers can then be submitted for review to determine the most cost-effective risk mitigation strategies.

Must focus on optimising maintenance workload tracking across the enterprise and at Sustainment Centre level across all complexes by serving as a single entry point to outside customers with capability to identify workload capabilities and shortfalls across the enterprise and use this information to pursue new/repatriated workload.

Description attribute focuses on the technology and processes to source and approve/certify the correct parts, where and when needed, delivered timely and at cost, regardless of the source of procurement. Sources are Logistics contract repair, local manufacturing, “the boneyard” or Maintenance/Regeneration Group, surplus sources, and Defense or commercial suppliers.

Readiness Tool allows top brass to determine which battalions and gear are most prepared for battle. 

Marine Corps is experimenting with artificial intelligence to improve the way it deploys its forces and spot potential weaknesses years in advance.

The Marines built a tool that crunches data on personnel and equipment to measure how prepared individual battalions are for combat. The tool could ultimately help top brass deploy some 186,000 active-duty Marines and countless pieces of military hardware.

Allocating the service’s resources is an imperfect science. Leaders map out deployment strategies years or even decades in advance, but situations will invariably arise that throw a wrench in those plans.

Planners are constantly forced to “reshuffle the deck” as crises flare up in different places and figuring out which units to move around is a complicated process. Numerous factors—training, deployment history, equipment readiness and others—affect how prepared a group is for a given situation.

Today planners rely on spreadsheets, whiteboards and basic applications to track readiness and manage forces, but artificial intelligence can offer them a better understanding of the resources at their disposal and the long-term effects of the decisions they make.

The tech crunches both structured and unstructured data from multiple force management applications to create a real-time image of how prepared each unit is for combat. The tool specifically aims to build a five-year management plan for the Marine infantry battalions.

Tool has two primary functions: It flags the units that are most ready for action and explains why others come up short. Armed with that knowledge, commanders can proactively train and invest in less prepared groups before they fall even further behind.

“A lot of times Marines only invest more when the problem arises. Now they can see it ahead of time and say ‘OK, we’re going to take action now to prevent that from occurring.’”

The tool sheds light on how deployment decisions will affect forces in the long run. By analyzing historical trends along with real-time data, the tool could show how a unit’s readiness would change if it were, for instance, moved to a new location or given additional resources.

Marines are also building a separate AI system that ranks course of action plans based on those extrapolations, which could one day be merged with the readiness system.

“You integrate that all together and you get a full view of readiness across your force. Now you can really make some data-driven decisions.”

The next stage of the effort will include parts of the Marines’ aviation and logistics units, bringing about half branch into the purview of the program. With that additional data, the AI would further refine its processing rules to deliver better results. 

So artificial intelligence is tasked with managing the particular deployments of troops in battle, moving them around in new and unexpected ways.

One way that future might manifest is by looking at a place where AI already manages workforce inventory-- like a warehouse stocking system, a process in which items are unloaded wherever there is space in a warehouse and then scanned into a computer system than can track where the item is located. 

When it comes time to retrieve an item for delivery, the same computer system directs warehouse workers to the most efficient route for finding the item, which could be stowed throughout the warehouse. 

When modeling the warehouse system, it is interesting to consider how AI, given the same objectives as a commander, might organise and direct forces to achieve them.

“Why would an AI allocate forces in distinct areas of the battlefield? It could intermingle them and manage them at a granular level. Its categories are way more numerous, in the way that warehouse AI manages categories at the shelf level. 

Instead of distinct groupings of armour, air support, infantry, and artillery, a system run by artificial intelligence and managing a battle could coordinate a single helicopter with a pair of howitzers and an infantry platoon, directly grouping each in the same way that a warehouse worker finds an assortment of items to place into the same package.

“Anytime we’re on the road, our job, maintenance wise, is to provide safe and reliable jets for the pilots to accomplish their mission. Every new location presents a different challenge in how we get the job done, but the end goal for providing a safe jet for a pilot never changes. What does change is the environment in which we operate in.”

“Every exercise you go on is different, and it can be hard to start off. It could be not having the parts we need on hand, or not knowing how the base operates to get the support we need. Over time you figure out how to acquire some of that on site, what to bring along yourself and how to solve a problem before it becomes one.”

Here we consider how AI systems could be useful to a typical work order job of launch and recovery of aircraft, engine maintenance and servicing of life-saving equipment-- just a few of dozens of tasks Troops are expected to accomplish within a full day. 

“We learn to operate in new environments, out here we’ve adapted our operations to give the best support possible. Maintenance is maintenance, our job never changes, but how we execute the mission does.”

“Our main mission is to enable successful sorties by generating aircraft parts, ultimately maintaining our full spectrum readiness. Our team encounters new repairs that force changes in direction and orders, but they all adapt and constantly find ways to make sure the job gets done.”

Maintaining the aging aircraft can be challenging as some parts are no longer commercially produced and the Fabrication Flight must collaborate and innovate to construct parts on their own.

“We all need each other in order to complete a task and make sure operations are done correctly.  “Everything revolves in a circle – sheet metals technicians hand over parts to metals technicians who follow their technical order before sending to nondestructive inspection to make sure the piece is good for use on an aircraft.”

To display the teamwork necessary, the Troops walked us through the Fabrication Flight process. 

Sheet metals technicians , kick off operations by receiving technical orders for aircraft repairs. Troops survey the technical order and pull a thin, malleable sheet from their collection. The sheet is then cut to the specific measurements and handed off to a metals technician to be heat treated in a large oven.

"On our side we handle breaking the metal down and then crafting it to match the technical order for the specific part. When completed, the piece is hauled over to nondestructive inspection where tests are conducted to ensure the part is compositionally sound and aircraft ready.

"With the resources we have here, we are the final stop on a part's journey to an aircraft,” "If anything is wrong with the part, it's flagged and sent back to the workshop to either correct the issue, or start the operations all over again."

Accuracy in fabrication is essential in getting aircraft back up flying. When the part has completed all processes and is cleared for use, it is installed onto the aircraft, restoring readiness of the aircraft.

Fabrication flight Airmen gain a sense of accomplishment by witnessing their work come to fruition each time an aircraft takes off.

“Having combatant commands and other mission partners on base only adds to the importance of mission success. We take pride in the work of the flight, seeing the aircraft out there completing missions thanks to the maintenance here is an amazing feeling.”

An alternative specifically functional approach offers a more general way of understanding performance enhancements.at Job Sites. While contractors can incorporate these principles in their business practices, they often do not correspond to the functional divisions within companies.

Practices with the potential to help Job Site get smarter as a whole may actually reduce the efficiency at one site versus another.. This point is relevant to defense production, where collection and reporting of costs in particular categories are required.

An increase in one category is not necessarily clearly linked to a decrease in another so may look like inefficient cost growth rather than an expense related to overall performance improvement.

The first task in site visit efficiency implementation is identifying what value the product has and what the value stream looks like. A fighter aircraft has value to its ultimate customer according to their different defense roles. Value is defined "in terms of specific products with specific capabilities offered at specific prices through a dialogue with specific customers"

Once value is specified, the next step is to determine the value stream. Contractors need to understand every step in construction, that is to say, the value stream, to produce it efficiently. Then, contractors must continually look for unnecessary steps and reduce or eliminate steps. For example, production engineers can measure distance traveled, either by the part or by the workers involved, in the creation of a part and search for ways to reduce it.

The third principle involves making value flow through the work site. Components of the final product should flow smoothly, going from station to station without a lot of waiting time in between. The traditional approach to this is work sites organised by task. For example, there would be dedicated cutting areas, dedicated drilling areas, and so forth. Parts would be brought to the area, stored until the machines were free, worked on, and then moved onto the area where the next process would take place.

Some contractors tend to focus on efficiency of the work station; machine utilisation rates, instead of product value flow. Bottlenecks can occur when one operation slows the critical path of product as it moves through work site due to insufficient machine capacity & high tool changeover times, etc.

The fourth principle is knowing that customer pulls all activity. In short, this means that production should be tied to demand; no products should be built until downstream demand for them occurs. Pull production involves considerable collaboration with customers, to know what they require and when they require it, and with suppliers, to make sure their inputs are supplied at the appropriate time. One of the strengths of DoD is that they force conformance to this principle because contractors build aircraft only when ordered, after the money has been appropriated by Congress.

The constant pursuit of high performance is the fifth principle for contractors dedicated to constantly search for ways to improve their efficiencies, to cut costs, and to improve the quality of their products. A number of tools can be drawn on. For example, pursue short projects that study particular processes and look for low-cost ways for improvement. One example is of a series of "action workouts." Technically, these represent broad approach that favors continuous improvement.

In conclusion, these principles do not stand alone. Rather, there is considerable overlap in what they involve. For example, without near-perfect production, including very high-quality products received from suppliers, value cannot flow smoothly through work site. Out-of- control processes will create problems. The search for inefficient processes can help improve the quality of products and assist in the search for high-performance ratings.

As described, a major guiding principle for contractors is the removal of various forms of inefficient processes. For example, one major source is inefficient transit of parts throughout Work Site. The entire time the part is at the Work Site, being moved from place to place and not being worked on is a major problem.

All production activities can be separated into planning and control of daily activities being digitally structured along with work objects.

Digital behavioural structure of production order and information generation is based on grouping of planning and control of daily activities. Each item is lined up with considered activities, objects and each corresponding subsystems.

Digital framework for production work flow system is designed where each team activities and those objects are connected with administration functions.

1. Scheduled routine maintenance includes cleaning, installing updates, etc.

2. Unscheduled repairs to equipment that has stopped performing its assigned function or is performing its function inadequately.

3. Companies lack awareness of when equipment is due for maintenance, upgrade or replacement

4. Downtime is due to machinery failure/malfunction

5. Poorly maintained equipment results in lost production time and lost profits. Unscheduled repairs are costly

6. Installing predictive maintenance equipment helps to determine the condition of your process to provide actionable intelligence to warn of impending failure if reported issues are not addressed

7. The ideal predictive maintenance system will allow for scheduling of maintenance prior to equipment failure, which will help to eliminate unplanned downtime, reduce repair costs and equipment failures and slow asset deterioration.

8. Predictive maintenance program far less expensive than a reactive program

9. Wearable-solutions all non-invasively upgrade today’s equipment today.
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10. Simple and inexpensive to upgrade your existing equipment with easy-to- attach component and electrical sensors to monitor critical systems and assets.

​Repair Development Engineering group is dedicated to developing new repairs and reliability enhancements to increase fleet readiness and decrease total cost of ownership. Our Repair Clinic process is typical of our aggressive approach to lowering the cost of ownership. 

With our Repair Clinic, we look at the high volume/high value items in the customer’s scrap bin and develop repairs that produce reliable, quality parts. Our large portfolio of repair capabilities is constantly growing, thanks to the Repair Clinics and a large team of development engineers—innovators who are constantly looking for solutions to emerging material stress conditions. 

Developing and maturing a “digital representation of that system and how it interacts with its environment” would go a long way in delivering relevant trainers from the outset, rather than today’s simulators without the latest  update or inaccurate threat environments. 

The digital representation would also help with sustainment efforts throughout the life of the program, as models could help show how the system would hold up over time and in different environments.

“We’re in the process of building that model-based specification, that model spec for industry right now. When we get that part right, build that spec, now it’s in industry’s hands” to continue to make best use of that model environment.”

We want to learn a lot about model-based engineering with new systems without bogging the program down with new processes and design tools. To supplement that learning effort, Navy and industry could conduct a “Surrogate System Experiment: to help identify potential kinks in the new process to bring this group – representation from the organisations represented in this group today – into a collaborative environment where we can actually build a surrogate program and execute that model, the capabilities-based acquisition model.”

“Find out where the hard spots are, find out where we have to go soft, find out what is that deliverable, what kind of contract will work, where do we have to hand off between military and industry, how do we truly make that integrated data environment work in secure network environment?”

NAVAIR intends to begin implementing the model-based engineering concept into any new design, capability upgrade or sustainment program it can, seeking opportunities to learn as quickly as possible, “as opposed to waiting for the big bang on a brand new program.”

It’s important for industry to engineer the new product within threat model, instead of today’s practice of, “we write a 500-page specification with 20,000 shall-statements, and we give it to industry and go, here, design this. We don’t give them the threat models, we don’t give them the blue force models, we don’t give them that system of systems family model we just built. 

If industry can work within that model environment, then little changes can be made along the way – swapping one sensor for another, for example – without wondering how that change may affect the aircraft’s aerodynamics or its low-observability or other features that today are designed separately on paper. 

With a digital drawing in a threat-representative environment, the sensor could be swapped out and thousands of possible engineering solutions generated until the best one is chosen and be done in a matter of hours or days, rather than the months it would take with today’s processes to make those changes.

Benefits to this type of design effort continue throughout the test and evaluation, fielding and sustainment phases.

For example, in lieu of a paper-based design review, as industry meets various milestones in maturing its design “let’s take those models and let’s put them back in the tactical scenarios we developed with the operator back in step 1 and just see how it goes. 

What better evaluation or assessment of how the program is maturing than to actually run the current level of maturity of performance that we see in our models through the tactical situations we’ve built with the operators? Because in the end that’s what matters, in the end capabilities-based test and evaluation is about testing the capabilities – it’s not about ensuring industry met every one of those 20,000 specs. 

That’s where we spend all our time today during T&E, validating that industry met the specs. The fleet couldn’t care less, the fleet wants to know that the attributes and the capabilities that they’re counting on will be met.”

That sort of constructive testing – all conducted within the simulated environment – could pave the way to eventual virtual testing once the first hardware is delivered, which would then pave the way to eventual live testing in the field with real operators. That flow would make the best use of everyone’s time and allow any problems to be addressed as early on as possible.

We provide facility-planning services to assist a customer establish its own engine maintenance facility, test cell or expansion program. These services can range from a simple summary review to an on-the-spot detailed analysis. As a result of these reviews and analyses, we can provide our customers with a building layout showing department locations, work flow and equipment placement. We can also recommend required facility equipment and estimate costs. 

We provide all the technical documentation to fly, operate, and maintain our aircraft engine products. We publish the engine and maintenance manuals, service bulletins, special instructions, illustrated parts catalogs, other technical documents and training materials. All publications are continuously updated to incorporate the latest configurations, repair processes, and operating recommendations. 

Most jet engines consist of a compressor, a turbine, and a combustor that are used to accelerate the flow of air through the engine, thereby producing a thrust force on the aircraft. Spare parts are ordered by our customers through a variety of contractual agreements to support flight line, intermediate and depot maintenance needs. 

We take care of your engines so you can focus on flying.  Our Engine Centers have developed state-of-the-art materiel management and supply chain management systems, which offer complete Contractor Furnished Materiel supply capability. By using Contractor Furnished Material, our customers take advantage of our unparalleled strength in vendor and distributor relationships to minimise delays in part delivery and to reduce overall cost.

Are you getting many complaints about job site & equipment maintenance, are work orders taking too much time to complete? If this sounds familiar, maintenance metrics can help you identify causes/solutions. Maintenance planners can use these metrics  to pinpoint the real issues and how to fix them. These metrics are not too difficult to collect. Use them even when everything seems fine to get a quick measure of your maintenance performance.


Improvement is one reason. For improvement, we need to know where we have been and hopefully, where we want to go. Another is that people like to get a score or feedback on how the organisation sees their work. That said, while metrics reflect individual performance, the focus of metrics should be to identify issues with the business processes associated with the work and not the individual themselves. From the metrics, we can identify trends and patterns. Adding to that, consider: "What gets measured gets done. What gets celebrated, gets done well."

Recognise there are two types of metrics, leading and lagging. Both are useful. To better understand the difference, ask yourself if you are operating within the organisation as Mr. Fix It or just cleaning up the mess? Are you taking a pulse of the organisation or performing a after action review on last month's performance? 

In most organisations, the reality is that everyone is focused on the after action reviews. Often, the reason for the after action review focus is those numbers are the most readily available from current reports. They are easy to identify and it is the quickest way to satisfy the demand for metrics. Lagging metrics are like looking in the rearview mirror; they only tell you where you have been and not where you are headed.

Ideally as a rule of thumb, you should have multiple leading metrics for every lagging metric. Leading metrics are performance drivers. Utilising them allows you the opportunity to make preemptive actions to improve your chances of meeting the desired outcomes or lagging metrics. Leading metrics often measure activities or even processes.

Understand that the selected metrics much like processes, too, the organisation chooses to employ will drive employee behaviour as well. As an example, one organisation chose to measure the number of work orders requiring re-approval if the labour or materials cost exceeded significant change of the original estimate. This measure is a lagging metric because it was after the work had been completed. The reapproval process was designed as a heads-up information sharing activity to show more dollars spent than anticipated. What behaviours did it drive? Planners would significantly overestimate labour hours and contractor/materials costs to avoid the re-approval process. 

Look at how the domino effect takes hold from there. Those labour hour estimates were used to create the following week's schedule. Now we aren't assigning enough work to the technicians as the hours were padded. Wrench time suffered. Work orders on completed work that were left open became easy targets for technicians or contractors to charge time to when working on other jobs or idle. 

Materials for other jobs were charged to those work orders as well. How can we use metrics to drive behaviours? Introducing or revising the organisational metrics requires training for all stakeholders, not just maintenance personnel. Don't assume that the standard metrics that you might take for granted, such as "schedule compliance," are understood by all. Using this metric alone, questions like, "What counts toward the metric?," "When is the cutoff point that items can be added to the schedule and count?" and "What is a scheduled job?" should be addressed from an learning, even machine based perspective.

Before reviewing specific metrics, it should be noted that variations to the following metrics could be defined or utilised based on your requirements. The listing is not intended to be comprehensive, but to provide insight on specific behaviours related to maintenance planning and scheduling. Let's begin with those metrics directly influenced by the maintenance planning and scheduling function. 

The following metrics are more general in nature to the maintenance organisation. However, the planning or scheduling role can and often does influence these metrics. Consider the simple metric of "schedule compliance" as an example. If the planner has not correctly identified the materials and parts, or incorrectly estimated the hours required for the job, it may be very difficult to complete the number of jobs that are scheduled. If the scheduler has not coordinated the various crafts and the work cannot be completed in the scheduled window, schedule compliance may be impacted.

Are your metrics headed down south or stagnating, not improving? Wondering how to identify the problems or root causes? Do you know the behaviours the metrics are driving? There is a saying that the "product always follows the process." 

"If your system is not working, don't blame the people, blame the system." To that end, where is your mission outcome program to evaluate if the processes are working? Ideally, you should be pulling several completed work orders off the pile randomly every operational time period as a minimum. Gather the planner scheduler, supervisor, technicians, storeroom person, and maybe even the plant manager, as examples and walk the jobs. 

When you get to where the work occurred, you should be stepping through metric type items to determine the process effectiveness. Did the planner scheduler estimate the job duration correctly? Did they have the right parts? Were the parts staged and kitted? What about multicraft coordination? Did operations have the equipment ready based on the schedule? Did the job get completed before the due date? Was any follow-up work required? Was the work order completed and closed in a timely fashion? The primary goal is to determine if the operational processes worked, but you can also determine performance issues or the need for training, as examples.

1. System Test and Evaluation. The use of pilot, prototype, production, or specifically designed networks to obtain or validate engineering data on the performance of the system during the developmental phase normally funded from RDT&E of the program. 

2.  Effort associated with the development of any specialised tools or data in support of the system level test program. 

3. Test articles that are functionally configured to represent and test the complete defense materiel end item being developed or produced, 

4. Detailed planning, conduct, support, data reduction and reports excluding the contract data requirements list data 

 5. Test articles functionally configured to represent and test subsystems/components of the defense materiel end item being developed or produced 

6. Conduct testing up through the subsystem level, which can be associated with network element acceptance testing 

7. Demonstrate engineering design and development process is complete, risks have been minimised , system will meet specifications  and estimate the system's military utility when introduced 

8.  Determine whether the engineering design is supportable, practical, maintainable, safe, etc. for operational use 

9.  Provide test data with which to examine and evaluate trade-offs against specification requirements, life cycle cost, and schedule 

10  Perform the logistics testing efforts to evaluate the achievement of supportability goals

11. Evaluate adequacy of the support package for the system, e.g., deliverable maintenance tools, test equipment, technical publications, maintenance instructions, and personnel skills and training requirements, etc. 

12.  Cost, schedule, performance measurement management, warranty administration, contract management, data management, vendor liaison, subcontract management, etc. 

13.  Support element management, defined as the logistics tasks management effort and technical control, and the business management of the support elements. 

14. Logistics management function encompasses the support evaluation and supportability assurance required to produce an affordable and supportable defense materiel system. 

15. Planning and management of all the functions of logistics include:  maintenance support planning and support facilities planning; 

16.  Support equipment requirements determination; supply transportation; provisioning requirements determination and planning; training system requirements determination; 

17. Network resource determination; organisational, intermediate, and depot maintenance determination management; and data management 

18. Program models, tests and associated simulations e.g., such as wind tunnel, static, drop, and fatigue  integration ground tests; test bed aircraft and associated support; 

19. Qualification test and evaluation, development flight test, test instrumentation, ballistics, range and accuracy demonstrations, test facility operations, test equipment including its support equipment, chase and calibrated pacer aircraft support and logistics testing 

20.  Avionics integration  Test bench/laboratory, including design, acquisition, and installation of basic network and test equipments 

21.  Ability to simulate in the laboratory the operational environment of the avionics system/subsystem 

22.  Air vehicle equipment consisting of the avionics and/or other air vehicle subsystem 

23. Modules required by the bench/lab or flying test bed in order to provide a compatible airframe avionics system/subsystem for evaluation purposes 

24. Flying test bed, including requirements analysis, design of modifications, lease or purchase of test bed aircraft, 

25. Modification of aircraft, installation of avionics equipment and instrumentation, and checkout of an existing aircraft used essentially as a flying avionics laboratory 

26. Avionics test program, consisting of the effort required to develop test plans/procedures, conduct tests, and analyze hardware and software test results 

27. Verify the avionics equipments' operational capability and compatibility as an integrated air vehicle subsystem 

28. Effort required to design, code, de-bug, and document network programs necessary to direct the avionics integration test 

29.  Engine military qualification tests and engine preliminary flight rating tests 

30. For sea systems: model basin, hydrostatic, fatigue, shock, special sea tests/trials agenda preparation, data collection and analysis, dock and sea trials and hull vibration survey elements 

31.  Test articles such as Inert Measurement Vehicles, Launch Separation Vehicles, Separation and Control Test Vehicles, Boost Test Vehicles
 
32. Ordnance: test articles such as Ballistic Test rounds, Inert Measurement rounds, Dummy rounds, Launch Separation rounds, etc. 

33.  Operational test and evaluation conducted by agencies other than the developing command to assess the prospective system's military utility, operational effectiveness, operational suitability, logistics supportability 

34. Include compatibility, inter-operability, reliability, maintainability, logistic requirements, etc., cost of ownership, and need for any modifications. 

35.  Initial operational test and evaluation conducted during the development of a system tests as system demonstration, flight tests, sea trials, mobility demonstrations, on-orbit tests, spin demonstration, stability tests, qualification operational test and evaluation, 

36. Support  required to prove the operational capability of the deliverable system  e.g., technical assistance, maintenance, labour, material, etc. consumed during this phase of testing 

37.  Logistics testing efforts to evaluate the achievement of supportability goals and the adequacy of the support for the system 

 38. Deliverable maintenance tools, test equipment, technical publications, maintenance instructions, personnel skills and training requirements, network support elements 

39. . Design engineering and production of system or subsystem mock-ups that have special contractual or engineering significance or that are not required solely for the conduct of one of the above elements of testing. 

40. Risk reduction facilities where software and hardware can be developed, integrated, tested and evaluated for both stand alone functionality and/or interoperability prior to being fielded. 

41. Support elements necessary to operate and maintain, during test and evaluation, systems and subsystems, which are not consumed during the testing phase and are not allocated to a specific phase of testing. 

42. Repairable spares, repair of reparables, repair parts, consumables, warehousing and distribution of spares and repair parts

43. Test and support equipment, test bed vehicles, drones, surveillance aircraft, tracking vessels, contractor technical support 

44. Operational and maintenance personnel, special fixtures, special instrumentation, etc., that are utilised and/or consumed in a single element of testing and that should be included under that element of testing 

45. Deliverable training services, devices, accessories, aids, equipment, and parts used to facilitate instruction through which personnel will learn to operate and maintain the system with maximum efficiency. 

46. All effort associated with the design, development, and production of deliverable training equipment and its associated software as well as the execution of training services 

47. Overall planning, management, and task analysis function inherent in the work breakdown structure element systems engineering/program management 

48. Distinctive deliverable end items of training equipment, assigned by either a contractor or military service are required to meet specific training objectives. 

49. Operational trainers, maintenance trainers, and other items such as cutaways, mock-ups, and models e.g. Operational Instructional Equipment, Maintainer Instructional Equipment

50. Training course services; contractor-conducted training in-plant and service training; and the materials and curriculum required to design, execute, and produce a contractor developed training program. e.g. Operator/maintainer Instructional tools 

Much of what is discussed in Pentagon meetings centers upon two broad topics: war-fighting and the material tools necessary to support a fight, now or in the future. But an examination as to how DoD goes about the actual procurement of the systems intended to support the military’s needs is not often conducted. 

Not a good thing because these processes may sometimes generate results which are either  unsuited, unanticipated, expensive to remediate or sustain, or confusing to the operators of the fleet. In short, these processes, if not carefully executed, may have serious effects on the Readiness of the DoD war-fighting abilities. 

Still, this lack of attention regarding the process is many times a function of system complexity instead of indifference: The entire process, end-to-end, is disjointed and confusing and, because the key actors speak different languages and operate under different incentives, the entire process is difficult to fully understand, even to those who are closest to the action.

So, what’s the deal? A key first step is recognising that we shouldn’t mob the ball and that there are multiple pathways and tools that we should use in the right combinations for the challenge at hand. Use experience and critical thinking to select the right methods amongst the full range of options and provide the rationale to the acquisition decision makers. 

Policy and practice both agree it is vital to think critically about the task at hand and then pick the right combination of tools and methods. Otherwise, we mob the ball on a certain approach even when not appropriate, resulting in an inevitable backlash from senior Defense policymakers and Congress.

For senior leadership, don’t lock in on a single method – it doesn’t lead to success.  Let your staff know that you’ll open to approaches beyond the flavor of the month, and that you’ll tolerate some risk if they do their homework by bringing a logical and well-reasoned program approach that fits the challenges we are up against.

DoD has stood up a new Futures Command. to show they are serious about ending  years-long, expensive modernisation programs and unclear requirements. While failing early and often can prevent some of those issues before an requirement  becomes a program of record, there are still some risks that, by trying to be a more quick and innovative enterprise, the command could  still run into cost increases and drawn-out timelines if it jumps too hard on emerging technologies,.

“There are a variety of ways to fail when it comes to developing these technologies,” the way to  look at it is, you can make sure that you have it right, or believe that you’ll get it right.”

DoD has applied many best practices including close collaboration with senior leadership. But there are always parts of the plan that could be improved. Plans to develop weapons systems with emerging technology could come back to bite.

Proceeding into weapon systems development at earlier stages of technology maturity raises the risk that the resulting systems could experience cost increases, delivery delays, or failure to deliver desired capabilities.

It may not be the best idea to create programs around emerging technologies, before having a chance to test them in an operational environment.

“As DoD identifies the capability, there are technologies used to achieve that capability.  There is an advantage to maturing those technologies before you begin what’s called a program of record.”

DoD is already required to test in a “relevant” environment but a training situation, for example, might not give a good enough gauge of whether something will be useful.

When you test something in an operational environment, you might discover the technology isn’t as mature as you thought it was.“ And if you’ve already stood up a program for it waiting for that technology to mature could delay delivery. And as DoD has learned, what they have in hand at the end might already be outdated.

To help encourage this mindset in the acquisition workforce, leaders launched a collection of digital tools that illustrate the full range of contracting methods. As programs develop their strategies the goal is to discourage acquisition mob ball and instead encourage acquisition professionals to apply the strategy, discipline, and other skills necessary to play the game well.

Military executives tend to grab onto a hot new contract approach and mob the ball as soon as the whistle blows. It’s the only thing they focus on, despite what their coaches told them about playing positions. If by chance the ball gets kicked free, the mob moves to another part of the field and again surrounds the ball. 

Eventually, they learn to play proper positions and be in the right place at the right time for the needs of the game. They begin to actually play and develop strategy, discipline, and teamwork skills. They improve their game, and it’s a lot more fun for everyone. But then some of them join the acquisition workforce and start playing acquisition mob ball.. This is frustrating for everyone.

“Engineers” in the services are responsible for the acquisition of systems to equip the fleet. They are the organisations to interface directly with industry to develop and build new systems for the fleet. 

Requirements, or descriptions of systems are dished out along with the funding necessary but often the specific intentions undergo unanticipated “translations” once they are delivered. 

Officers responsible for the actual process of making things undertake a difficult of voyage of discovery, often ranging far beyond what may have been the original expectations. As long as the top-level requirements are met, at cost, much of what will happen in this part of the service and then in industry, is typically over DoD staff’s “radar-horizon.”

Two factors drive the command, which stand far above any other considerations; cost/schedule but it must translate into high performance in the field when they are finally in the war fighter’s hands.

Many in DoD who are involved in this process, are fully occupied by considerations related to “the budget,” acting as the primary interface between DoD and Congress who always provides changes to the funding up to the very last moment, meaning that not only is it difficult to plan the large movements in the acquisition process, but it is also impossible for the command to control execution.. 

To be plain, the fleet itself is not well connected to this process, and as far as any involvement in the discussions regarding the actual building of systems, it is outside of the loop. There are few if any mechanisms which allow the operational forces a voice at any point in the process. 

Industry presumes that the engineering shop speaks for the Fleet. This is not the case. Further, there is no sensible inquiry into what the fleet may want or need. Nor is there a considered methodology for gathering feedback from front-line operators. Writ large, the operational chain-of-command, which might actually have a sensible, real-time opinion on these material topics is not directly connected to those making the decisions and far removed from those building the systems.

Operating forces are supposed to be represented in this process by the respective Type Commanders, but these organisations are only loosely tied to the real decision makers who reside at the Pentagon. To be fair, in some communities, the relationships, authorities, responsibilities that exist between specific Type Commanders and their respective advocates in the Pentagon are close and well defined. In others, they are far looser and less specific.

The one agency technically charged to represent the fleet is Fleet Force Command, which produces a document called the “Integrated Prioritised Capability List” of the combatant commander’s highest priority requirements, defining shortfalls in key programs which impact capability of commanders to accomplish their missions. 

But the list is disconnected from the real churn in Washington; the ongoing, minute, minute-to-minute interplay which takes place between command and Congress. Ultimately, the List is too broad in addition to being brief, and it ends up, in the words of one flag officer: “little more than a top-level restatement of the obvious.”

Once the necessary funding and requirements has been provided, to a certain degree, command loses track of the engineering activities. These requirements are further developed, and then the radar is put out for bid by industry via a Request for Proposal. It is in this process that things become even more disconnected from what the fleet would want and technically speaking, only be a few layers deep.

“Cross-functional teams are a really good thing. We have a whole list of leading practices for these teams. And, really, our concern there is just that the services continue to do some of the things that they’ve been doing in those pilots.” Everything that’s gone well, and also what hasn’t, should be recorded and preserved according to the team report, but there is no agreed upon process.

“Getting those down and communicating those as this new command stands up is going to be vital, to make sure that they’re not reinventing the wheel or committing the same mistakes as they stand up this new command.

“The directive that set up the cross-functional teams said  it would be a good idea to get the lessons learned,’ but there was nothing formal in place-- the leaders response was, absolutely, that’s something we need to do."

Every program has a unique set of characteristics, circumstances, and goals. Best acquisition strategy practices are very clear that program managers and contracting officers should pick the right approaches and contract types for the challenges at hand.

The contractors usually do the deep work necessary to build the weapons system and the results may be unexpected. In short, what comes out may differ from the expectations elemental to the entering concept This is the price of submitting requirements which are insufficiently detailed. Also, this is the cost of the engineers operating without the direct and deep involvement of line officers.

As for the various industrial competitors for the contract, they understand that their respective offerings will not only need to meet the stated, top-level requirements but will have to do so at a price point which will be in line with both Congress and DoD desires regarding cost and schedule. 

Leaders are launching a series of pilot programs to try and reduce the time for getting companies on contract by setting up a schedule of regular events with key industry partners, and aside from those scheduled events.

We want to look at suppliers from a portfolio point of view and not just get caught up in each program.” Then a  series of direct dialogues between industry executives and DoD bosses to try and move faster in researching and engineering new weapons systems. 

Ultimately, someone wins the competition as judged by a selection board, not inclusive of fleet-personnel. The winner will then embark on the actual design, and eventually construction of the weapons systems with varying degrees of oversight occurring at key Project Milestone Decision Points. 

The defense acquisition system uses three milestones to oversee and manage major defense acquisition programs:

 Milestone A decision:

Approves program entry into the technology maturation and risk reduction phase, which involves developing technologies and reducing risks before committing the resources needed for complete system development.

 Milestone B decision:

Approves entry into the engineering and manufacturing development phase, which commits acquisition managers to developing a specific system for production and fielding.

 Milestone C decision:

Approves entry into the production and deployment phase, during which the contractor produces system units for fielding.

As industry works, unanticipated technical issues are discovered and costly schedule changes are introduced. For example, DoD timelines are altered, or unanticipated technical issues arise. Trade-offs are then decided upon and some of these may have significant end-product impacts. Unfortunately, these trade-offs are usually not coordinated by key DoD principals and are never known to the fleet.
 
Beyond that, many of the daily, critical decisions regarding production are taking place far below the level of the few DoD officers assigned to the project.. As competition has increased in recent years, cost has become increasingly critical in order for industry to win key contracts. 

One issue not receiving enough attention is the experience levels of many of those working on military contracts has declined in recent years: Experience is expensive, and to win competitions for work, it is often necessary to sacrifice experience. 

Finally, there is a technology factor at play in this process. Industry and DoD engineers sensibly want to keep moving forward, technologically speaking. It is more profitable to industry and more interesting in general to those who live in the material world, day-to-day.

Driving down technical risk before entering full-rate production helps bridge the gap between a promising technology and a full-rate production program by maturing technology and developing initial concepts of operation before committing to a major acquisition program.

In industry, new technology has a higher profit margin and promises the potential for additional sales. In the military, it is essential to maintain a technological air gap between our forces and those of potential adversaries.

However, it is one thing to provide a high-tech solution to the fleet, and it is entirely another to support that system through training and in-service support. 

Front line units are overwhelmed with new technologies, which may or may not be a net plus, regardless of their newness. The problem here is that while there is a large constituency for new systems, there is very little incentive associated with the support of existing systems.

While all of this may seem complex, the truth has more variables than represented here. still, the point is that the entire process is driven with contradictions and conflicts. Whatever may be the solutions to these problems, they are well worth considering. To not consider them while focusing on officer appointments and rotations seems like standing in a lake full of alligators and worrying about the mosquitos. 

"We've got people in there who know what they're doing. It's time to roll up our sleeves and get on with it."

“It’s all about velocity. We’re trying to experiment. We are trying to prototype. We are trying to iterate and get stuff downrange quickly.”


Myth Busters 

Myth: All defense acquisition programs have large cost growth. 

Reality: Cost control has improved significantly. 

Not only is cost growth significantly lower than historical levels, but recent efforts have dramatically lowered cost growth further. Multiple measures show statistically lower cost growth on major programs. Historical analyses also show that cost controls are better than in decades past We do still have legacy problems on older programs. Total research, development, test and evaluation [RDT&E] cost growth is still rising due to older programs. We need to do better through continued incremental improvements, but recent improvements focused on acquisition fundamentals and an empowered DoD workforce have been more successful than hands-off  acquisition reforms.

Myth: Defense programs usually cut quantity e.g., to pay for cost growth

Reality: Most major programs deliver the original baseline quantity or more. 

We don’t as a rule cut program quantity. Most major defense acquisition programs actually produce the quantities we originally planned at Milestone B. This runs counter to the impression given from just focusing on certain high-visibility programs  that incurred major cuts in quantity.

Myth: Swings in O&S cost estimates indicate poor program management. 

Reality: The dynamics of cost estimates indicate that O&S costs appear to be heavily driven by external inflation factors. 

Analysis shows that the recent dynamics of program O&S costs estimated during acquisition correlate with the dynamics of labor, fuel, and maintenance costs. While this aligns with intuition, it also indicates that O&S cost increases involve both factors that the acquisition system cannot control as well as some that can, in part be controlled [e.g., system reliability, fuel efficiency, maintenance]. Operational tempo also affects O&S costs through many of these factors [e.g., the amount of fuel consumed and maintenance costs], and changes in forecast tempo will affect O&S costs independent of both inflation and weapon system performance. Thus, while the acquisition system needs continued attention to the levers it can control with full knowledge that their effects often will not be seen for decades. Stakeholders need to recognise the strong influence of other factors on O&S costs. 

Myth: Program requirements are unstable.
 
Reality: High-level requirements seldom change on major programs, and very few programs have many changes. 

Most Major Defense Acquisition prorams showed no changes that we could trace from the original baseline to the latest Selected Acquisition Report  for the program. Moreover, of the few programs with any traced changes, most had only one. This is commensurate with experts’ experience indicating that changes are largely made at the engineering level as development seeks ways to meet high-level requirements. Changes, however, are not always bad. Some changes reflect prudent requirement reductions to unforeseen high costs of options uncovered in development or new affordability pressures. Other changes address new threats that otherwise would render an unmodified system obsolete upon delivery. Thus, flexibility, measured response, and continued tradeoffs, together with smart management attention to cost implications, are more important.

Myth: The DoD cannot acquire systems quickly. 

Reality: DoD acquisition can be timely and responsive. 

Despite criticism that defense acquisition is too slow, the highlights below show that schedule growth is lower than cost growth in development, and cycle times for major programs have not increased much from decades past even while challenged with dramatic increases in weapon system complexity. This is not to say that internal processes cannot be improved, so efforts continue to institutionalize streamlining and  smart decision making .

Myth: Defense acquisition is broken.
 
Reality: The acquisition system for decades has given DoD the most capable military in the world and has been improving both in the past and more recently. 

While there is no absolute definition for sufficiency, annual performance report indicate system functions reasonably well compared to the past and continues improving. We cannot look at a single metric to measure the performance of the defense acquisition system, and many metrics work at odds with each other. For example, the so-called “iron triangle” of cost, schedule, and technical performance has long shown that emphasising one or two dimensions often is done at the expense of the others. While cost --followed by schedule-- metrics are the easiest to quantify, we find all three dimensions indicate stability and, in many cases, significant improvement.

Systems engineering can be defined as an iterative process of top-down synthesis, development, and operation of a real-world system that satisfies, in a near optimal manner, the full range of requirements for the system. Systems engineering teams must work together on a set of inputs to achieve the desired output where the output is a system/capability that meets the user’s needs and requirements in a near optimal manner. 

Must elicit requirements from customers and potential product/service users,  validating and prioritising customer/user requirements,  Defining requirements in a manner that is executable and verifiable,  Identifying alternative solutions to achieve requirements,  Isolating balanced and robust solutions that “best” meet requirements, and  Verifying implemented solutions satisfy requirements. 

Systems engineering must account for the entire life cycle of the system/capability acquisition. The life cycle functions that systems engineering accounts for are development, manufacturing/production/construction, deployment/fielding, operation, support, disposal, training, and verification. Systems engineering ensures that the correct technical tasks are accomplished during the acquisition process through planning, tracking, and coordinating phases.

1. Apply systems engineering approach balances total system performance total ownership costs within the family-of-systems, systems-of-systems context

2. Develop systems engineering plan approval describe program overall technical approach, including processes, resources, metrics, and applicable performance incentives.

3. Detail timing, conduct, and success criteria of technical reviews

4. Develop total system design solution balance cost, schedule, performance, and risk,

5. Develop/Track technical information required for decision making, 

6. Verify technical solutions satisfy customer requirements, 

7. Develop cost-effective/supportable system throughout the life cycle, 

8. Adopt open systems approach to monitor internal and external interface compatibility for systems and subsystems, 

9. Establish baselines and configuration control

10. Create focus and structure of interdisciplinary teams for system and major subsystem level design.  

​In many situations, not enough attention is applied in establishing correct requirements up front. This causes problems when unclear requirements surface later in the life cycle, and more time and money is spent in fixing problems. 

So  it is necessary that requirements are established in a systematic way to ensure their accuracy and completeness, but this is not always an easy task. This difficulty in establishing good requirements often makes it more of an art than a science. The difficulty arises from the fact that establishing requirements is a tough problem and often the implementation gets mixed with the requirements.

 In addition, it requires people with both communication and technical skills. As requirements are often weak about what a system should not do, this poses potential problems in the development of dependable systems, where these requirements are necessary to ensure that the system does not enter an undefined state. 

The development of dependable embedded systems requires even more complicated requirements as the embedded system not only interacts with networks but also with the outside world. Therefore, the importance of establishing good requirements is even greater in embedded systems design. 

Requirements and specifications are very important components in the development of any embedded system. Requirements analysis is the first step in the system design process, where a user's requirements should be clarified and documented to generate the corresponding specifications. 

While it is a common tendency for designers to be concerned about starting the design and implementation, discussing requirements with the customer is vital in the construction of operational critical systems. For activities in this first stage has significant impact on the downstream results in the system life cycle. For example, errors developed during the requirements and specifications stage may lead to errors in the design stage. 

When this error is discovered, the engineers must revisit the requirements and specifications to fix the problem. This leads not only to more time wasted but also the possibility of other requirements and specifications errors. 

Many accidents are traced to requirements flaws, incomplete implementation of specifications, or wrong assumptions about the requirements. While these problems may be acceptable in non-safety-critical systems, safety-critical systems cannot tolerate errors due to requirements and specifications. Therefore, it is necessary that the requirements are specified correctly to generate clear and accurate specifications. 

There is a distinct difference between requirements and specifications. A requirement is a condition needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective. A specification is a document that specifies, in a complete, precise, verifiable manner, the requirements, design, behavior, or other characteristics of a system, and often, the procedures for determining whether these provisions have been satisfied. 

For example, a requirement for a car could be that the maximum speed to be at least 120mph. The specification for this requirement would include technical information about specific design aspects. Another term that is commonly seen in reports is requirements specification which is a document that specifies the requirements for a system or component. It includes functional requirements, performance requirements, interface requirements, design requirements, and development standards. So the requirements specification is simply the requirements written down on paper. 

The first step toward developing accurate and complete specifications is to establish correct requirements. As easy as this sounds, establishing correct requirements is extremely difficult. There are different steps we can take toward establishing correct requirements. Although some of the suggestions sound fairly obvious, actually puttting them into practice may not be as easy as it sounds. 

The first step is to negotiate a common understanding. "There's no sense being exact about something if you don't even know what you're talking about." Communication between the designer and customer is vital. There is no point in trying to establish exact specifications if the designers and customers cannot even agree on what the requirements are. 

Problem stems from ambiguities in stating requirements. For example, say the requirement states that we want  to create a means that would transport a group of people from one theatre to another. Possible interpretations of this requirement includes building ship/aircraft, among other possibilities. Although each of these transportation devices satisfy the requirement, they are certainly very different. Ambiguous requirements can be caused by missing requirements, ambiguous words, or introduced elements. 

The requirement does not state how fast troops should be transported. Taking an aircraft would certainly be faster than riding on a ship. These are also missing requirements. "a group of people" in the above requirement is an example of being unclear with words. What exactly does "group" mean? 

The requirement states to "create a means" and not "design a transportation device". This is an example of introduced elements where an incorrect meaning slipped into the discussion. It is important to eliminate or at least reduce ambiguities as early as possible because the cost of them increases as we progress in the development life cycle. 

Often the problem in establishing correct requirements is how to get started. One of the most important things in getting started is to ask questions. Context-free questions are high-level questions that are posed early in a project to obtain information about global properties of the design problem and potential solutions. Examples of context-free questions include who is the client?  What is the reason for solving this problem?, What environment is this product likely to encounter? What is the trade-off between time and value?

These questions force both sides, designer and customer, to look at the higher issues. Also, since these questions are appropriate for any project, they can be prepared in advance. Another important point is to get the right people involved. There is no point in discussing requirements if the appropriate people are not involved in the discussion. 

Related to getting the right people involved is making meetings work. Having effective meetings is not as easy as it sounds. However, since they play a central role in establishing requirements it is essential to know how to make meetings work. There are important points to keep in mind when creating effective meetings, which include creating a culture of safety for all participants, keeping the meeting to an appropriate size, and other points.

Exploring possibilities is another important step toward generating correct requirements. Ideas are essential in establishing correct requirements, so it is important stakeholders can get together and generate ideas. Every project will also encounter conflicts. Conflicts can occur from personality clashes, people that cannot get along, intergroup prejudice such as those between technical people and marketing people, and level differences. 

It is important that a facilitator is present to help resolve conflicts. In establishing requirements, it is important to specifically establish the functions, attributes, constraints, preferences, and expectations of the product. Usually in the process of gaining information, functions are the first ones to be defined. Functions describe what the product is going to accomplish.

 It is also important to determine the attributes of a product. Attributes are characteristics desired by the client, and while “Twin” products can have similar functions, they can have competely different attributes. After all the attributes have been clarified and attached to functions, we must determine the constraints on each of the atrributes. Preferences, a desirable but optional condition placed on an attribute, can also be defined in addition to its constraints. Finally, we must determine what the client's expectations are. This will largely determine the success of the product. 

Techincal reviews require  function testing tool for indicating progress of the requirements work. It can be formal or informal and generally only deals with technical issues. Technical reviews are necessary because it is not possible to produce error-free requirements and usually it is difficult for the producers to see their own mistakes.

User satisfaction tests are used on a regular basis to determine if a customer will be satisifed with a product. Black box test cases  are constructed primarily to test the completeness, accuracy, clarity, and conciseness of the requirements. Existing products are  useful in determining the desirable and undesirable characteristics of a new product.

At some point it is necessary to end the requirements process as the fear of ending can lead to an endless cycle. This does not mean that it is impossible to revisit the requirements at a later point in the development life cycle if necessary. However, it is important to end the process when all the necessary requirements have been determined, otherwise stakeholders will never proceed to the design cycle. 

Establishing good requirements requires workers with both technical and communication skills. Technical skills are required as the embedded system will be highly complex and may require knowledge from different engineering disciplines such as electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Communication skills are necessary as there is a lot of exchange of information between the customer and the designer. Without either of these two skills, the requirements will be unclear or inaccurate. 

It is essential requirements in safety critical embedded systems are clear, accurate, and complete. The problem with requirements is that they are often weak about what a system should not do. In a dependable system, it is just as important to specify what a system is not suppose to do as to specfiy what a system is suppose to do. These systems have an even greater urgency that the requirements are complete because they will only be dependable if we know exactly what a system will do in a certain state and the actions that it should not perform. 

Requirements with no ambiguities will also make the system more dependable. Extra requirements will usually be required in developing a dependable embedded system. For example, in developing a dependable system for  non-computer-literate stakeholders, extra requirements should be specified to make the system safe even in exceptional situations.

A system is very loosely defined and can be considered as any of the following definitions: A combination of elements forming a complex or unitary whole, set of correlated members, ordered and comprehensive assemblage of facts, principles, or doctrines in a particular field of  knowledge, coordinated body of methods, a complex scheme, or a plan of procedure and any regular or special method of plan of procedure -- system of marking.

The important characteristic of a system is  unity, functional relationship, and useful purpose. Systems engineering is not a technical specialty but is a process used in the evolution of systems from the point when a need is identified through production and construction to deployment of the system for consumer use. 

Systems engineering requires knowledge from different engineering disciplines such as aeronautical engineering, civil engineering, and electrical engineering. The development of embedded systems also requires the knowledge of different engineering disciplines and can follow the techniques used for systems engineering. Therefore, it is appropriate that the steps used in establishing system requirements also be applicable to requirements for embedded systems. 

Basically, the system operational requirements define how the system will be used in the field by the customer.  Usually, in defining system requirements, the tendency is to cover areas that are related to performance as opposed to areas that are related to support. However, this means that emphasis is only placed on part of the system and not the whole system. It is essential to take into consideration the entire system when defining system requirements. The system maintenance concept basically describes the overall support environment that the product is supposed to exist in. 

After the system operational requirements and system maintenance concept are defined, the preliminary system analysis is performed to determine which approach for system development should be adopted. 

The following process is usually applied: After data is collected and inputed, the model may be used. Analysis after using the model will lead to recommendation for some kind of action. After the preliminary system analysis, advanced system planning will be done. Early system planning takes place from the identification of a need through the conceptual design phase. The results from these planning will be defined as either technical requirements included in the specifications or management requirements included in a program management plan. 

The system specification includes information from the operational requirements, maintenance concept, and feasibility analysis. The System Engineering Management Plan contains the following sections. 

The technical program planning and control part describes the program tasks that have to be planned and developed to meet system engineering objectives such as work breakdown structure, organisation, risk management, etc. 

The system engineering process part describes how the system engineering process applies to program requirements. The engineering specialty integration part describes the major system-level requirements in the engineering specialty areas such as reliability, maintainability, quality assurance, etc. 

The  conceptual design review is also performed during the conceptual design stage. It usually occurs early in the system engineering development life cycle after the operational requirements and the maintenance concept have been defined. 

It is very important to verify the requirements are correctly implemented in the design. This is done with requirements traceability which is usually refered to as "the ability to follow the life of a requirement, in both forwards and backwards direction i.e. from its origins, through its development and specification, to its subsequent deployment and use, and through periods of on-going refinement and iteration in any of these phases.

Requirements traceability captures the relationships between the requirements, specifications, and design. Standards for systems development require requirements traceability be used. Although requirements traceability has been around for decades decades, there has been no consensus as to what kind of information should be used as part of a traceability scheme. 

The problem is that the definition of traceability differs when taken from different points of view of the system.i.e. the view of the system is different for customer, project manager, test engineer, etc. Each organisation has a different purpose and methodology for requirements tracing. 

The projects typically involved are real-time, embedded, in vitro diagnostic instruments Traceability aids project managers in verification, cost reduction, accountability and change management. Traceability helps in verifying network requirements are satisfied in the design process and that they are tested for during the verification process. Traceability allows the allocation of product requirements early in the development cycle to reduce costs of correcting defects due to untraceable components in the integration and system test phase. 

Providing quantitative traceability analyses also allows for accountability in making sure that project milestones are approved, deliverables are verified, and customers are satisfied. The documentation from traceability also keeps information organised during changes in staff or management. 

While the division also has an automated traceability system that allowed them to automate many of the tasks, it was the process and not the tool that led to their success. The main purpose of the traceability program is to identify links and determine that the links are complete and accurate. 

The traceability analysis consists of the following aspects: forward requirements analysis, reverse requirements trace, forward test analysis, and reverse test trace. These steps are used to trace each requirement through its design elements and test traces so it is possible to give feedback about the design components that are not yet implemented during the life cycle. Each requirement is stored as a separate element, and graphical interfaces show how the individual pieces of data relate to each other and trace back to their sources. 

There also exists requirements simulation tools allowing designers to capture system requirements and designs into graphical executable system models. These models can be “Simulated” to ensure requirements correctness. Tool focuses on behavioural and performance modeling. 

Can use object-oriented modeling language for the specification of complex systems by constructing a common means of describing complex systems using object orientation. It is a specification language and not a development process so there are no details given on the features and how and when you “Link” them together during systems development.

The main concerns about using an object oriented language for real-time embedded systems is about the speed and size of the application. Some points in support of object-oriented programming for embedded systems are that objects are effecient, developers can write larger systems with fewer defects in less time 

Restrictions in architectural modeling is cited as one shortfall. For example, there are no predefined network node stereotypes to help improve standardisation and the lack of these predefined stereotypes means there is no capability to capture information in depth to fully describe the operational properties of the system. Another shortfall deals with deficiencies in concurrency modeling and how schedules.

It would also be very helpful to have a technique that can assist in a structured development of correct and accurate requirements. In particular, Quality Function Deployment is a method for the structured product planning and development that enables a development team to specify clearly the customer's wants and needs, and then evaluate each proposed product or service capability systematically in terms of its impact on meeting those needs. 

Quality Function Deployment is based on matrices that show the relationships between, for example, a customer need and a feature of the system. For example, say the rows define customer wants in a car are defined. Lets say A is the car looks cool and B is the car never breaks. The columns can be specific features of the car. Lets say one is good gas mileage and the other is aerodynamic styling. Each box represents the relationship between a customer want and a feature of the car. A car with good gas mileage is not related to the car looking cool, so their is no relation. However, a car with aerodynamic styling would look cool so their is a strong relation. Similarly, a car with that never breaks has a possible relation with good gas relation but not much relation with aerodynamic styling. 

It is essential to establish correct requirements and specifications early in the development process to prevent errors later on in the system life cycle. However, we still need to realise the reality of requirements changing over time. There are several reasons why it is difficult to make good requirements. First, requirements for embedded systems are even more complex than for other systems because they must interact with the outside world and not just other network components. Establishing correct requirements require people with both technical and communication skills. In addition, it is a tough  problem and the implementation often gets mixed with the requirements. 

The complexity with establishing correct requirements makes it more than just an engineering skill. Often people have the attitude of "I'll know it when I see it," thus making it difficult to establish the requirements early. Over the past years, the area has mainly focused on tool development with the development of prototyping/execution tools, requirements traceability tools, and specifications/requirements network tools. The current trend is toward executable requirements/simulation tools.

The conceptual system design is the first stage in the systems design life cycle and an example of the systems definition requirements process  In establishing system requirements, the first step is to define a need. This need is based on a want or desire. Usually, an individual unit/organisation identifies a need for an item or function and then a new or modified system is developed to fulfill the requirement. 

After a need is defined, feasibility studies should be conducted to evaluate various technical approaches that can be taken. The system operational requirements should also be defined. This includes the definition of system operating characteristics, maintenance support concept for the system, and identification of specific design criteria. In particular, the system operational requirements should include the following elements:

1. Define the mission - The first step always begins with clarifying the objectives, identifying the primary operating mission of the system in addition to alternative and secondary missions, and limiting the problem so that it can be effectively implemented. 

2. Identify feasible alternatives - All the alternatives should be considered to make sure that the best approach is chosen. 

3. Select the evaluation criteria - The criteria for the evaluation process can vary considerably, so the appropriate ones must be chosen. 

4. Performance and physical parameters - Definition of the operating characteristics or functions of the system

5. Use requirements - Anticipation of the use of the system.

6. Operational deployment or distribution - Identification of transportation and mobility requirements. Includes quantity of equipment, personnel, etc. and geographical location.

7. Operational life cycle - Anticipation of the time that the system will be in operational use.

8. Effectiveness factors - Numbers specified for system requirements. Includes cost-system effectiveness, mean time between maintenance failure rate, maintenance downtime, etc.

9. Generate network input data - The requirements for appropriate network input data should be specified.

10. Manipulate the model : Applying modeling techniques - A series of models should be used. 

​Simulation is a practice  best incorporated throughout the design process, from concept to prototyping to pre-production development. Let’s review the historical use of simulation, new tools available to industrial designers and how to leverage simulation for reducing production costs and time-to-market.

Taking a prototype through the wind tunnel has always been a significant cost. The more iterations required, the more simulation testing, the higher the cost of development. 

Ideally, the more you can simulate the better off you will be, but how can we afford to do this? How does simulation interrupt the process? Is there a way to continue making progress while simulation is being done?

There are many new tools available to offer industrial designers the ability to simulate independently.

Professional simulation is still a necessity, but with these new tools designers can conduct some basic testing and analysis throughout the design process without having to stop what they are doing, and duplicate the resources required in order to do so.

Computational Fluid Dynamics offers testing in two categories: aerodynamics and heat transfer. The use for aerodynamics is pretty straightforward, limiting drag is one of many ways we can improve efficiency. Determining how the lines and curves can be tweaked to allow air to flow over and under aircraft helps designers by providing immediate, actionable feedback. 

The ability to make adjustments and test in real time allows designers to be more accurate earlier in the design process.. Another application for fluid dynamics testing is heat transfer. This is especially important in mechanical engineering. 

Simulation of the mechanical components allows you to properly test the impact that heat can have on the performance of particular parts. Say for example, plastic is being used to replace a traditionally steel part, but can only handle a certain amount of heat. Fluid dynamics analysis can identify points of failure or areas that have to be insulated to protect certain parts from high amounts of heat. Not only can it cause a part to fail, but it could also cause warping depending on the heat/material used, or be dangerous if the hot parts are too close to a worker.

Parts are stress-tested. As an example, bumpers and siding in the event of collision is a common application for this type of simulation. This is especially important as alternative materials are used where there is limited experience for specific parts. Often times components need to factor in both thermal stress as well as pressure loading due to normal use. Although engineers know the mathematical formulas to calculate key performance, incorporating simulation allows an algorithm to validate the design or identify points that require modification.

In recent years, the tools mentioned above have not only become available to designers and engineers, but have become affordable as well. There is no real replacement for crash-testing and wind tunnels, but a lot can be done in earlier phases of design to reduce the number of times these real-world simulations are required. 

Simulating early and often can help identify issues early, reducing the amount of rework that inevitably flows downstream. Similar to 3D rendering, these simulation tools improve the design and communication process, helping to reduce the number of iterations of the traditional tried and true methods. 

Our new Design workshop space will showcase the technology from start to finish. 

Every new technology comes with a learning curve, but we don’t want that to keep our customers from exploring what’s possible with our tools. 

Every manufacturer should be able to consider new and better ways to make things, and that’s why we’re opening a new workshop space to show our customers what generative design is, how they can use it and how it’s going to change the future of manufacturing. 

Generative design is our AI-based technology that uses design constraints like weight, strength and manufacturing method entered by the engineer to generate a set of solutions that fit within those constraints. Rather than coming up with a design and performing simulation studies to ensure it works, generative design takes the guesswork out of the process, letting designers and engineers use more of their creative potential because they already know the solutions are sound.
 
It’s an incredible tool to have at your fingertips, but it’s also a different approach that offers a new way to tackle design problems. That gave us another reason to create a place where people could come to kick the tires on the technology. 

The Field Lab is equipped with state-of-the art machinery so that customers can see how to design, prototype and make products in real time. Today’s manufacturers have a lot of options when it comes to making their parts—from tried-and-true CNC machines to the newest 3D printers on the market. 

Generative design allows a user to select their preferred manufacturing processes right from the beginning, so they can be sure that whichever solution they choose will be manufacturable with the equipment they have at their disposal. 

We are excited about the ability for our team to explore more design options from the beginning and iterate more quickly. “We do a lot of iteration when designing parts, but sometimes it’s not going very fast in the time cycle that we have. The product that we get at the end may not be exactly what we want as far as the product spec, but we get as close as we can. 

As our products get more complicated, we’re going to have to look at new methods and new tools, and that’s why we’re here at the Generative Design Field Lab. We’re ready to test new things like generative design and additive manufacturing because that’s how we’re going to become even better in our industry.” 

“To move manufacturing forward, we need to be thinking about the entire product life cycle, and that starts with the earliest stages of design. We can make things today that weren’t possible before because we are bringing solutions to the table by walking people through the whole process of design to make—is such an important part of us delivering on our mission and vision.”

With our continued Repair Shop process improvements, Marines have the  opportunity to better support the requirements of the Fleet without compromising current operational maintenance needs, while ensuring long term readiness of its surface force.

The process was not set up for success. We were not scheduling inspections at the right point We consistently did not executing the class maintenance plan and the tools commanders have to ensure the plan is executed consistently were not strong enough. 

So, we've had problems there. The expert capability to identify the easy stuff was not even there.” 

We are studying creation of a formalised aviation maintenance schoolhouse. Currently, each wing has its own processes. We have begun "breaking down and tracking every dime" in Engineering & Logistics budget. "We've never had it to that level of fidelity, but we're doing that now.” We have great maintainers, but how do you make sure they stay? And how do you make more of them?"

Implementation of certification process improvements has only been in place for a short time, but a huge payback has been realised.  Not only has the technical discipline of work and work certification during  availabilities been strengthened  the process “gaps” or problem areas are now visible, permitting development of corrective actions and implementation strategies.  

Event certification has led to improvement in how availability work packages are defined and improvement of the technical management of work in execution and more effective integration of testing.  

Establishing the certification process as the core foundation for maintenance availability planning and execution will guarantee a greater technical discipline in work planning; repair accomplishment and adherence to availability schedules, all of which are necessary to stabilise what has been a very dynamic maintenance planning and budgeting process.

With the depots unable to keep up with the demand for maintenance from aircraft carriers and submarines, those in the maintenance, engineering and fleet teams are looking for any solutions to help ease the backlog of work. And while better advance planning alone won’t solve the problem, the officials say, the situation cannot be resolved without improvements in planning.

To that end, a maintenance planning summit brought together carrier, submarine and surface ship maintenance planners to discuss best practices. One of the action items from the planning summit is to go back and look at, are we in some cases we don’t have the right balance between  condition-based maintenance and a more time-directed model.

Take example of  tanks, we have enough data to know that when this type of vehicle comes in for this type of availability and the age of the fleet component is this, We know statistically know we’re probably going to have to go work on X number of tanks,” 

“Today what we do is say, go inspect the tanks, and then go open them up and I find out you got to go work on them. That means we have to go get material and do the engineering work and we are starting the work late so we need to do the engineering, load those resources into the plan.

We are working hard to improve contracting process, getting requirements for work and materials to the depots farther in advance. “We are also attempting to improve our forecasting for material procurement. So we want to buy our supplies and work to forecast our material needs earlier and order earlier.

“So that will help, including developing a rotatable pool of equipment. So instead of removing a component like a electrical breaker, remove it and repair it – instead of doing that, just remove it and replace it with a new breaker or a refurbished breaker.”

We’re also paying closer attention to the resources available at the depots compared to the resources required to complete an availability on time. The office has implemented “weekly, if not daily reviews of maintenance availabilities with senior leadership in the effort to ensure we have the right resources applied when needed to execute these availabilities on time at the depots .

And where we don’t have these resources, we’ve been reaching out to our industry partners and contracting – whether it’s one of the lead maintenance providers topside– we’ve been reaching out to industry to shore up resources in yards during availabilities to deliver on time.”

A second key idea that came out of the planning summit was to create a faster feedback loop to inform technical foundation papers that inform each ship class’s maintenance plans.

“We need a tighter learning circle.”

The technical foundation directives are going to be updated – and completed and reviewed each year in coordination with the budget process. The carrier, submarine and surface ship planning organisations will also work together to ensure real-time information-sharing as they improve their own planning efforts, and they will meet regularly  to share lessons and measure progress.

Planning will never be 100-percent accurate, but that the data exists to make more informed decisions  we are making today. “We may not be able to predict everything, but current estimates are unacceptable.

DoD Reporting of Depot Maintenance Funding Allocations puts Goals for 50/50 Workload Balance between Private and DoD Work Sites at Risk”

Reporting of expenditures instead of obligations by DoD depots presents an inaccurate picture of depot maintenance allocations since the amounts differ. For the most part, the allocation percentages for budgeted funds represent obligation amounts obtained from DoD financial accounting systems. However, in reporting the amount of depot maintenance funds allocated to the private sector, some reporting organisations used expenditures rather than obligations as required  by official guidance. 

For example, several depots we visited reported their subcontracted depot-level maintenance work as expenditures rather than obligations. Reasons given by depot officials for reporting expenditures rather than obligations include :

Workload against obligated funds may not have been fully performed during the fiscal year, so the depot believed reporting expenditures was a better reflection of the actual workload.

Depot did not know obligations were to be reported instead of expenditures; and many work orders can be associated with a multiyear contract, so the depot believed that reporting expenditures would be a better representation of the costs associated with multiyear contracts for the fiscal year in question. 

Depots said producing types of information we suggested would require a massive undertaking and may be of limited value. We disagreed and, on the basis of the response, and assigned the matter for oversight consideration.

Because DoD has limited visibility over the allocation of private/public funds in some interservice agreements and direct sales agreements, inaccurate reporting of the depot maintenance workload allocation may result. 
Interservice workload agreements refer to work that is performed by one DoD component for another. Official guidance requires that the service departments establish measures to ensure correct accounting of interservice workloads; however the allocation of these funds may not always be accurately reported. We found instances where a service awarded depot maintenance work to another military service, which then contracted out a portion of that workload to the private sector. 

The military service awarding the work, as principal owner of the funds, inaccurately reported this as public workload because it had not inquired whether all the awarded work was performed at the DoD depot. 

While we were unable to fully evaluate the extent of inaccurate reporting associated with interservice agreements, until the service departments establish sufficient measures to accurately account for and report their distribution of depot maintenance workload reporting information will continue to be inaccurate.

Limited visibility over direct sales agreements is another reason why the depot maintenance workload allocation may be inaccurately reported. A direct sales agreement involves private vendors contracting back to DoD maintenance facility for labor to be performed by depot employees. 

We found that the reporting of the distribution of private/DoD sector workload for direct sales agreements may not be accurate. With a direct sales agreement, there is no requirement for the *private vendor to identify and break out the contract costs, such as materials and other factors of production, and allocate them to expenses performed by the private vendor or the DoD depot. 

We found the use of direct sales agreements may have resulted in an overstatement of private-sector funds, and understatement of DoD sector funds. In addition, we found similar instances where work performed by DoD sector under a direct sales agreement with a private vendor may have been misreported as being performed by the private sector.

 Although we were unable to fully evaluate the extent to which costs associated with these types of contract agreements were misreported, until private vendors break out direct sales agreement costs by the private and DoD sectors, DoD reporting of funding allocations to maintain a 50/50 workload between private and DoD job sites may remain inaccurate. 

Reporting agencies did not always provide accurate information for the Core Report because they do not have clear guidance on issues such as how to report additional depot workload performed that has not been identified as a core requirement, accurately capture inter-service workload, calculate shortfalls, and estimate cost of planned workload. 

Services organise and aggregate their capability information by categories of equipment and technologies known as work breakdown structure categories. The work breakdown structure category is a grouping of work associated with DoD’s weapon systems and equipment. 

DoD uses these categories to organise information on its various core capability requirements and workloads. The work breakdown structure can be expressed at any level of detail down to the lowest-level part, such as a bolt.
​
Our experienced staff can help you with the logistics of any project.  We can assist in planning your repair, what may be needed and make sure that the process goes smoothly.  We aim to make sure you aren't left stranded without parts or the tools needed to complete a job once started. 

We have a professional shop available to any unit that wants to do their own work and save money doing it.  Our rates are much less than the independent shops and we offer professional grade tools.  

Our Shop has online access to the same repair manuals that the pros use, updated constantly and available at modern workstations. An important facet of our business model is that customers can blend their jobs to include multiple pricing models for any one job – providing flexibility and saving money in the process.

The stability of our model should allow us to attract some of the best in the industry, and as a result, more senior staff will be available. One of our biggest differences is that we are a top-notch technical repair facility.  We know field units have to have the ability to bring their own parts into theatre  and to do their own repairs.  We provide education, mechanical assistance, facility and tools.

Without context, work orders can be a difficult thing to deal with. On the other hand, smart work order tracking—which will explain the what’s and how’s of the most common problems—can yield a number of benefits. 

First, it can lead to lower costs. Second, it can produce a more productive workforce. In the delicate balancing act of facilities administration, these two things are very important goals. To help you achieve them, here are the most important questions to help you ensure that your work order system is efficient.

What’s Ordered Most Often? Look at what problems pop up the most often. Is it an overflowing tank? Faulty electrical fixtures? A stuck  button? It may be tempting to use a quick and temporary fix for these problems  to save time and money. However, if there’s a problem that’s recurring, it will most likely cost you less in the long run to order an extensive inspection of the problem area. Those quick fixes may seem cheap now, but repeat them enough times and they can be a big expense overall.

How Long Does It Take to Fix It? Tracking the time needed to complete each order can help you improve how you use your maintenance team. For example, let’s say there’s an elevator malfunctioning on a ship. If you track how long it takes a maintenance worker to fix it, you can better plan how you’ll dispatch the team the next time the issue occurs. This will be especially key for large depots, where multiple work orders are generated each day.

How Often Is It Ordered? If you have multiple units complaining about the same item in the office, that may be a sign that you need to purchase new assets. If the desk chairs on the Titanic keep breaking, it may be time to look at a brand of chairs that are more sturdy. If you receive multiple complaints about ALIS  not working on the F-35, that may be a sign to order new systems. 

While it’s understandable that you want to get the most value out of your assets, once they’ve outlived their usefulness, they can be a roadblock for productivity, and therefore have a negative impact on the field unit bottom line.

How Quickly Is the Order Filled? Another important part of tracking work orders is knowing how much time passes between the order’s submission and its completion. This will vary according to different factors, including the problem’s complexity, the field units size, the methods used for generating your work orders, etc. Still, regardless of your field unit’s specific situation, you want to make sure that you streamline the process as much as possible so that interruptions to the staff’s workday do not continue longer than they have to.

How Does Communication Flow? For large field units  that don’t have an efficient work order system, it can be easy for communication about a problem to break down or get mixed up. How are your work orders submitted and processed? Is information passed via electonics, paper, or word of mouth? If a worker submits an order, do they know when the order has been processed?

Also how does the maintenance team know how to prioritise each order?  In a shop where a worker’s wondering why the request they submitted months ago hasn’t been answered and your maintenance teams are unhappy because they just got an urgent order when they already had a busy day ahead of them, and both are calling you to complain...well, that’s not good situation for anyone involved.


1. We teach and assist units that are willing to “turn the wrench” so that they can experience significant repair savings – providing as much or as little assistance as the customer needs.

2. We provide our Repair Shops service today in an large hangar bay facility to allow our customers to significantly reduce the costs of repair

3. We help field units understand more about their vehicle through instructional classes, and empowering them to control vehicle maintenance costs.

4. We include in our model vehicle lift, tools, pneumatic air tools, workbench, mats, and lights.  Shop supplies are included in the price.  

5. Vehicle fluids e.g., oil, brake fluid, radiator fluid and parts are marked up on average over cost.  

6. Mechanic assistance in diagnosing the vehicle provides education and guidance  on how to repair the item, and assist units in making the repair as needed.

7.  We make sure facilities are always open generating more availability, and less staff required.  

8. We take advantage of technology to optimise our scheduling with customers using Shop Automation system 

9. We track the average amount of time it takes a customer to repair a vehicle

10. We are always on call to fix emergency unplanned repairs encountered by most  field units living from appropriation to appropriation.   

​The Logistics Team, a sub-team within Current Readiness, oversees force-wide maintenance/supply processes to ensure production of prescribed levels of equipment “ready for tasking” at reduced product-line costs. This team focuses on the efficiency/effectiveness of all integrated logistics support processes, including material requirements forecasting, scheduling, contracting, purchasing, buying & inventory administration, distribution, repair induction, planning, diagnostics, repair & quality assurance.The Integrated Logistics Support System Tool assessment tools assist in identifying root causes of readiness cost degradation, enabling logistics assessment triage process platform teams enter into briefing cycles. 

The tool uses a historical baseline to identify components that perform outside established parameters, providing early indications of potential degradation before they affect readiness or costs and also provides more than 100 top-level metrics with detailed transactional data to assist in trend assessments. The logistics assessment process standardises the way teams identify readiness costs & degradation via assessment capabilities, standardised process models, and improved access to aggregated information. 

At the end of logistics assessments, teams work on initiatives and courses of action to reduce the ready-for-tasking gaps, as well as operations & sustainment costs.The Fleet Readiness Centers’ Aviation Rapid Action Team comprises engineering, maintenance &logistics experts who quickly develop, test, and deploy solutions to maintenance problems. They identify potential opportunities, improve or create repair capabilities, certify procedures, train technicians .helping sites establish their own permanent capability/support 

Co-located maintenance alters the traditional depot-level maintenance repair process by moving the intermediate and depot maintenance capabilities closer to each other. Under this new process, Navy personnel work at the depot site & perform intermediate repairs on items inducted into the depot repair cycle. When finished, they hand the items over to civilian artisans who perform the remaining depot repairs. This process lowers the charges for aviation depot-level repairable items. 


Similar initiatives are being applied to all platforms. Root cause assessments are performed in four areas–maintenance practices, maintenance planning, repair capability & contract strategies–with an eye on depot-level repairable & consumable cost drivers that present potential opportunities to reduce costs per flying hour. In the process, actual failure rates are compared to current maintenance plans, opportunities to turn high-cost consumables into repairables are investigated & additional repair capabilities are established as needed. 

Event-based maintenance, which requires fewer preventive maintenance hours at the squadron level, will result in operations and sustainment cost reductions. A significant number of initiatives have reduced life cycle costs, such as repairing several hundred parts that otherwise would have been discarded. Another initiative was the application of a phased strategy to programme performance-based logistics support efforts. This strategy involves different levels of supplier maturity, while setting desired levels of performance for industry in key areas: technical assistance & engineering investigation turnaround times, supply response time, etc.. 

The programme is maturing its intermediate & depot-level maintenance capabilities by leading depot establishment support, providing equipment, bills of material, drawings, lending training &technical assistance. In addition, the aircraft itself is undergoing improvements through component changes that will avoid life-cycle costs 

Current budget planning provides funding for operating maintenance & acquisition accounts. Program life cycle costs have tended to exceed expectations during execution. Efforts to account for shortfalls in acquiring systems are often balanced with affordability goals in operation & support of the new & legacy systems. 

Historical trends and forecasts suggest that the estimated operations & sustainment planning figures would require reduction in costs to sustain fleet operations as currently envisioned. Naval Aviation is making “should cost” a priority to understand and manage affordability, while balancing risk and meeting operational requirements. Reducing the overall cost per flying hour is a key component of reducing operations & sustainment costs. Several initiatives are underway to assist in achieving these goals

The crew chief uses existing maintenance instructions to verify the fault and manually complete a record to report the aircraft is grounded and record the fault e.g., intermediate tail rotor gearbox input seal leaking. The crew chief then notifies maintenance of the fault. Since the repair of the gearbox is above the capability of O-level maintenance, the aircraft must be evacuated to the I-level for repair. In this scenario, internal coordination has taken place between the O-level and I-level to have the gearbox repaired and returned to the user..

The crew chief then follows maintenance instructions in existing manuals to remove the unserviceable gearbox from the aircraft. He also completes the aircraft inspection and maintenance record, entering the fault description and the aircraft hours, time, date, etc. He completes the related maintenance actions record to note each related maintenance action. For example, “removed number 4 and 5 tail rotor drive shaft retaining clamps,” “removed number 4 and 5 tail rotor drive shafts,” and “removed intermediate tail rotor gearbox retaining nuts and removed intermediate gearbox.” 

Before forwarding the unserviceable gearbox to intermediate maintenance, the crew chief must complete a component removal and repair and overhaul record for the gearbox. This form contains historical usage data for the component; it is forwarded to I-level maintenance facility with the component. The crew chief also updates the aircraft component historical record by completing information about the gearbox’s removal. An unserviceable/repairable tag is completed, signed by a technical inspector, and attached to the unserviceable gearbox. 

The transfer of the gearbox from the O-level to the I-level is facilitated by the organizational unit completing a maintenance request form, with all pertinent component information and a description of the fault, and entries in the maintenance request register. The gearbox is then transported to the I-level facility along with all documentation. This scenario continues in I-level maintenance section for repair of the gearbox.

The crew chief is notified once the replacement gearbox is received by the unit’s tech supply. For installation, the crew chief inspects the replacement intermediate gearbox for condition and the inclusion of a properly completed component removal and repair/overhaul record. He then installs the gearbox, following maintenance instructions in technical manuals, and completes the related maintenance actions record installed gearbox and torqued, installed 4 and 5 tail rotor drive shafts, etc. He also completes the aircraft inspection and maintenance record, indicating the serial number of the new gearbox. 

Next, using the component removal and repair/overhaul record for the replacement gearbox, the crew chief completes the required usage entries from this record and enters the data in the aircraft component historical record. He also completes the oil analysis log with the due date of the new intermediate gearbox sample.
Once all maintenance entries are signed off and cleared by the technical inspector, the crew chief or technical inspector enters the requirement for a maintenance test flight for the replacement of the intermediate tail rotor gearbox on the aircraft status information record. 

A maintenance test pilot conducts the test flight in accordance with established procedures. Upon successful completion of the maintenance test flight, the test pilot signs the aircraft status information record and the aircraft is returned to an airworthy or ready condition.

Intermediate maintenance is the maintenance level between the most extensive maintenance — depot, and the least extensive but usually the most common organizational. intermediate-level maintenance defined as that maintenance that is the responsibility of and performed by designated maintenance activities for direct support of using organizations. Its phases normally consist of: calibration, repair, or replacement of damaged or unserviceable parts, components, or assemblies; the emergency manufacture of non-available parts; and providing technical assistance to using organizations. 

The Services generally require varying degrees of maintenance capability at different locations. Specifically, maintenance capability at any particular level depends upon mission requirements, force protection, economics of repair, transportation limitations, component reliability, workload agreements, facility requirements, frequency of tasks, and special training required. These requirements exist as Service doctrine that aligns maintenance support structure with the Services' strategic capabilities and objectives. 

Organisational maintenance is the responsibility of and performed by a using organisation on its assigned equipment. Its phases normally consist of inspecting, servicing, lubricating, and adjusting, as well as the replacing of parts, minor assemblies, and subassemblies. Of note is that organizational-level maintenance describes work performed in the field, on the flightline, or at the equipment site, and is not only accomplished by maintenance personnel, but also by equipment operators. 

After system fielding, it may be necessary to alter or change the configuration based on emerging operational requirements, improved technology, or to improve life cycle cost.  All changes which affect Form, Fit or Function must be managed via the alteration process.  Alterations and changes are reviewed with respect to their impact on safety, operational readiness, life cycle cost and supportability to the system and thoroughly assessed.  
Each of the support elements and related disciplines are analyzed to determine the impact of the proposed alteration on the system.  All impacts to the support structure i.e., manpower, training, technical manuals, spare parts, etc. are carefully assessed, planned for, and executed.  

Maintenance Planning is the foundation of effective life cycle planning.  The maintenance plan may include the technical manual, spare parts, drawings, and other data required to ensure a cost effective system, minimized life cycle cost, and reliability/readiness parameters.  Maintenance Planners will use the process as a guide for developing the maintenance plan.  The PM has the responsibility for establishing the maintenance plan.  

Maintenance planning is an iterative process to explore alternatives and to establish concepts and plans for maintaining a system throughout its life cycle and provides the basis for development of all other logistics support requirements.  This process starts with the development of a maintenance concept which is published in requirements documents in very broad terms.  As an acquisition program proceeds through the various acquisition phases, maintenance planning will become more defined.  Ultimately individual maintenance actions are assigned to appropriate levels of maintenance.  

Maintenance planning is performed to ensure: Development of the minimum set of maintenance requirements necessary to operate the equipment at its assigned readiness threshold.   Assignment of maintenance tasks to the appropriate level where they are accomplished most efficiently and effectively.  Development of a maintenance concept and detailed maintenance planning which will provide the information necessary to support logistics planning and management decisions. 

For all expeditionary acquisitions, maintenance planning will begin at the initiation of the program.  As the system design progresses, maintenance plans are refined into a maintenance concept based on the results of specific tasks within the supportability process.  These tasks include Supportability Analyses, Level of Repair Analysis Failure Modes, Effects Analysis,  and warranty provisions.  The process will be used as a guide to developing the maintenance plan.  Complexity and cost of the system, preventive and corrective maintenance tasks, and the skills and numbers of personnel required and available are some of the areas analyzed to refine the maintenance plan

Provide input to outline the initial maintenance concept, which is developed through review of historical, comparative analysis, cost data, and unique support and/or employment requirements. Provide technical guidance and/or support to ensure that individual maintenance concepts and plans are formulated in accordance with established guidance. 

Conduct evaluation of multiple sources of user feedback to determine readiness and maintenance circumstances.  The result of the assessment may result in changes to the maintenance tasks, revision to technical manual information, or operator training changes. 

A critical task in the maintenance planning process is identifying those preventive maintenance checks and services that maintain equipment at specified readiness goals.  Must have standardised method for planning, scheduling, and accomplishing preventive maintenance by the expeditionary force.  

All expeditionary acquisitions will use Reliability-Centered Maintenance methodologies to develop requirements for a system and each system will be covered by a Maintenance Index Page.  The goal is to identify the minimum preventive maintenance procedures required to maintain equipment in a fully operable condition within specifications.  

As part of the maintenance planning process, each support worthy system procured for the expeditionary forces will undergo an analysis to establish preventive maintenance requirements.  Supply support consists of all management actions, procedures, and techniques used in acquiring, cataloging, receiving, storing, transferring, issuing, and disposing of equipment, and spares and/or repair parts.  

The aim for all expeditionary programs is to have adequate organic supply support to achieve system readiness objectives available at the proper echelons of supply and maintenance. This support, including spare and/or repair parts and publications, are continued throughout the system's life cycle.  When organic support cannot be put in place prior initial capability interim supply support strategies will be employed.  There are three primary areas that an acquisition supply support program should address:  provisioning, cataloging, and replenishment.   
 Provisioning is the process of determining which materiel and how much of that materiel is necessary to support and maintain a system or equipment for all levels of maintenance--   organisational, intermediate, and depot for an initial period, not to exceed two years.  Provisioning must include the identification, selection, and acquisition of initial support items required for maintenance and provides instructions to ensure these items are prepositioned in the supply system and/or maintenance echelons before new systems are placed in service.  The assignment and verification of supply management codes such as Source, Maintenance, and Recoverability codes, criticality classification, item management, and others occur during the provisioning process and must be consistent with other supportability analysis processes. 

 The replenishment phase of supply support is the means by which spares are positioned and sustained in service supply chains.  This process is a continuous updating or refinement of the support requirements identified prior to system fielding.  These requirements, which were based on anticipated failure rates, logistics delay times and other related factors during provisioning, must be recomputed based on actual values measured during the fielding/deployment phase.  

Each system may have unique post production support problems, many of which were not anticipated.  These problems may include obsolete parts, inadequate sources of supply for the spare and/or repair parts, and changes in technology.  Issues are mitigated as part of the replenishment process.  

Expeditionary programs shall ensure that each program submits product support sheets to identify spares funding requirements.  At program initiation, supply support will plan for and execute program provisioning, cataloging and replenishment requirements.   As programs begin to install new equipment, spares budgets will be utilized to “buy out” spares to support the new equipment installations.  Expeditionary programs will use the standard outfitting process.  

1. Plan, coordinate, monitor, evaluate and adjust reset actions to support ground equipment reset

 2. Provide total life cycle management governance of ground equipment being reset

 3. Identify resource requirements to facilitate reset planning and execution

 4. Integrate logistics plans, policies, and strategic mobility for ground equipment

5. Integrate installation capabilities in support of ground equipment reset actions

 6. Establish specific Facilities Sustainment, Restoration, Modernization programs for ground equipment reset requirements

7. Identify budgetary resources to facilitate project planning and execution

8. Provide logistics intelligence regarding ground equipment reset to senior leadership

 9. Identify operational requirements to facilitate reset and reconstitution planning and execution

10. Identify and prioritize all critical supply and equipment shortfalls 

11. Manage resource programming and budgeting to support reset and reconstitution

 12. Review and provide assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of reset programs as they relate to resourcing

 13. Develop ground equipment requirements and concepts related to reset and reconstitution

 14. Identify equipment purchased through the Urgent Needs Statement/Urgent Universal Needs 

 15. Identify, consolidate obsolete equipment requiring reset to provide interim capabilities until procurement actions can be accomplished

16. Identify obsolete equipment not requiring reset, in order to provide for appropriate disposition

 17. Determine the final destination of unique equipment being retrograded, redeployed, or redistributed

 18. Main effort for the execution of the reset of ground equipment returning from combat

 19. Perform depot level maintenance and Manage the issue of reset ground equipment 

 20. Provide assistance in the performance of field level maintenance for equipment returned directly to home stations

21. Perform inventory management functions for ground equipment in support of reset and reconstitution

22. Publish and maintain a depot maintenance plan incorporating capacity from defense depots, commercial outsourcing, etc.

23. Manage the receipt, reset, and distribution of Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement authority equipment

 24. Develop and implement an equipment rotation program to support sustained operations

 25. Ensure Consolidated Issue Facilities capture accurate cost data and reorder Individual Combat Equipment to replace combat damaged equipment

26. Execute marking of all ground equipment service plans entered into maintenance cycles

 27. Forecast projected maintenance depot workloads and provide forecast to Supporting Establishment

 28. Manage and execute reconstitution of prepositioning programs

 29. Facilitate the retrograde of ground equipment to maintenance facilities within and outside of theater

 30. Arrange all Common User Land Transportation  in-theater to move equipment transferred to their custody to applicable Aerial Ports of Debarkation and Surface Ports of Debarkation

 31. Report and track strategic movement of equipment within and outside of theater

 32. Utilize the Time Phased Force and Deployment Data process when redeploying equipment

 33. Identify resource requirements to facilitate reset planning and execution

 34. Coordinate Life Cycle Management plans for ground equipment returning from combat operations 

 35. Provide support in order to provide In-Transit Visibility of ground combat equipment being reset and distributed for reconstitution

 36. Identify equipment and their locations to reset equipment returning from combat

 37. Determine and identify equipment reset strategies for each Authorized Material Control Number

 38. Execute procurement actions on ground equipment that has been determined uneconomical to repair

 39. Identify equipment and secondary reparables requiring marking during reset and reconstitution

40. Update equipment delivery schedules resulting from new procurements

 41. Implement reset and reconstitution at operational and tactical levels 

42. Conduct maintenance actions on equipment returning from combat operations using appropriate reset funding.

 43. Provide adequate reset funding for stock replenishment for returning equipment 

44. Ensure required capabilities remain in theater for mission accomplishment

45. Maintain operational control of the retrograde and redeployment process 

 46. Validate force requirements and equipment density lists to support operations 

 47. Assist and facilitate command and control of retrograde and redeployment 

 48. Manage redistribution transit of ground equipment assets in support of transition.

 49. Ensure adequate warehousing/surge maintenance capabilities
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50. Provide for adequate contracting support to support reset

Services must achieve logistics efficiencies and unit self-sufficiency” through autonomous delivery, 3D printing, and all manner of technical improvements.. In a specific technical example, Marines are  developing “rapid fabrication” kits, which allow soldiers to harness 3D printing to produce parts and tools. In addition, the Services are all sponsoring research to deliver via drone including the Joint Tactical Aerial Resupply Vehicle, 

Modern militaries hope to bypass the long and expensive factory-to-fort to port-to-base to last-tactical-mile to combatant-supply chain and replace it with organic manufacture on the battlefield or manufacture-to-direct need in combat to feed the tremendous consumption of operational demands.

Autonomous Aerial Cargo Utility System AACUS, a Marine system is intended to integrate a point and click system within a degraded visual environment, satellite denied navigation, obstacle avoidance enroute to and in the landing zone, and automated landing site selection for logistics use.

“Our delivery of these forces assures an unparalleled global expeditionary capability and gives our Nation options when needing to respond to a variety of crises. Ultimately, this unmatched capability extends a helping hand or projects combat power anywhere, at any time and provides a key strategic advantage for our Nation.

Speed and capacity have more often than not been a difficult  logistics problem for the military to solve. Too much too soon is just as much a problem as supplier coming late. In order to combat the dangers of too much too soon, logistics strategists must ensure there is a proper network to distribute personnel and materiel to the precise point of need. 

A smart logistics network is critical to the technical capabilities of machine delivery to the fight or direct manufacture by 3D printing. Delivering a unit ammunition it cannot carry, or printing too many spare parts, will only heighten follow-on logistics needs rather than alleviate them. 


Recent tactical struggles with logistics, however, highlight the problems of delivery systems and processes placed into under the stress of combat.  Military sustainment crews sometimes have little combat training and were expected to deliver materiel mostly unimpeded. 

A permissive environment for logistics extends to the network domains as well. The need to create a network of logistics, which can meet combat requirements and provide the necessary command and control, requires a significant reliance on permissive battlespace. Solutions, such as blockchain tech are on the way to provide the open- architecture necessary to interface in the market, while also providing required operational security.

Even in modern context, regardless of technical means of transportation or manufacture, logistics still lives in the physical world. No amount of quick delivery or high-tech 3D printing will alleviate the fact that personnel need food and water, vehicles need fuel, and weapons need ammunition. 

When we think of readiness, some experts confuse it with preparedness terms such as a ‘notice to move’. But it is common to find that despite a unit being well within its designated ‘notice’ when time comes for action, the unit is constrained because of the availability of kit, a lack of enabling elements available in supporting formations, the slow activation of commercial resources by strategic organisations as well as other logistics factors

In some cases, strategic-level decisions result simply because available capabilities cannot be appropriately sustained and, accordingly, are unable to be deployed. Sometimes decisions result in considerable advance moves based on combat forces being available, only to find these forces combat ineffective until the logistics ‘tail’ catches up. 

In some situations, we can see many logistics readiness issues transpire directly onto operational outcomes. Results in logistics are a consequence of a process; a process involving numerous capabilities, agencies and organisations and takes resources made available to the military at the strategic level of war and converts them to combat power at the tactical levels. 

Many factors are essential for logistics readiness, and the early performance of the logistics process at during an operation. Fundamentally, logistics readiness refers to the ability to undertake, to build up and thereafter to sustain, combat operations at the full combat potential of forces. It comprises actions undertaken during operations, but is predominantly a consequence of routines and practices set in organisation behaviour long before deployment. 

It is not a simple matter of issuing logistics units their own ‘notice to move’ or applying some other metric that will inevitably be ‘crashed’ through in a time of crisis; rather logistics readiness is a function of total organisational performance and efficiency. This standard of performance is achieved by addressing factors applicable at all levels – from the strategic to the tactical. 

Balance between logistics and combat resources and elements. There must be an appropriate balance of logistics resources to the combat elements. This is captured in the concept of‘tooth-to-tail’ ratios. But logistics resources can be appropriated by a variety of means and may include commercial operations as well as those in uniform. 

Logistics plans and policies. Logistics plans and policies, from stockholding policies at the unit and formation level right up to national mobilisation plans at the strategic / budget level must be available. Format and bulk of plans are less important than those that are developed through interagency effort, and reflecting the nature of an efficient and effective logistics process.

Logistics organisation. Logistics organisations must be structured to support operational requirements rather than bureaucratic needs. Although organisations may not need to be resourced to their full wartime capability during most periods which they rarely are because to do so would be cost prohibitive. The organisational architecture must be established to enable the transition to an operational footing and policies in place to enable such a transition to occur rapidly.

Materiel readiness. There must be a high state of materiel readiness across the force. In addition to appropriately funding the sustainment of equipment, and the establishment of appropriate stockholdings in appropriate areas to enable operational contingencies, the means of sustaining equipment must be as appropriate for support operations as they are for efficiency in garrison. Failures in materiel readiness in garrison are often replicated in major sustainability issues on operations, and necessitate consequential actions such as cannibalisation to achieve desired operational readiness outcomes.
 
It is difficult to remove any discussion on logistics readiness without referring to the capacity of the logistics ‘tail’. It may seem that it is easier to build up logistics forces, and support organisations, than it is to have combat forces ready.  This is because it is generally easier to procure equipment for logistics purposes than it is for combat forces, there is assumed familiarity between logistics operations and industrial activities which suggests that any conversion between the two is relatively simple, and there is always the possibility that the commercial sector can be turned to overcome any deficiencies there may be in organic logistics capabilities. 

There are  perceptions which tend to ignore the importance of logistics readiness to the overall employability of the force. Even if the ease of raising these logistic capabilities were a simple task, to take it for granted that operational deficiencies can be overcome at short notice is not very smart.

If military forces are to be responsive, fully trained and equipped logistics forces must be available; processes ranging from strategic activity to tactical action must be coherent and well-practiced. A combat force without efficient and effective logistic support is ineffectual and, in the end, a waste of organisational effort.

At the root of logistics readiness is the pairing of acquiring and maintaining military capability to have it available, and the establishment of a logistics process which enables or constrains its use operationally. Capabilities and acquisition process typically executed by Service headquarters, limit the combat forces that can be created and made available. 

But it is logistics capabilities and practices that limit the forces that may be actually employed on military operations. The combat unit that is formed and given the latest technology, best armour and capable of overmatch against any possible adversary will be ineffective – undeployable in practice – without a logistics system capable of sustaining it.  

Logistics readiness is particularly vital for expeditionary military operations. Not only do robust logistics capabilities define the capacity of a military to project force, these same capabilities underwrite the ability of a military to respond quickly, affording them time to overcome the distance there may be to the operational area.

Militaries rarely assign logistics readiness issues as their highest priority to resolve. Instead they are typically consumed with ensuring that the elements at the forward edge of the operational area are as ready as practicable. But if compromises are made as to the  preparedness of the logistics ‘system’ as a whole, or the logistics process is inefficient or ineffective due to poor practices and inadequate logistic discipline across the military, the readiness and preparedness of any unit destined for operations will itself be compromised. 

Operational reporting consistently identifies forces as having culminated as a consequence of system-wide logistics failures that may have been otherwise prevented. Less well known are the times in which senior commanders have had to make choices on which forces they chose not to deploy based on the readiness of the logistics forces and the logistics process more generally. 


When it comes to battlefield logistics, Marines are envisioning a future of warfare that looks very different from its experience over the last decade — one where combat units need to be able to sustain themselves for up to a week without any access to traditional supply lines. The prospect is creating demands for new technologies that let soldiers produce their own water, make many of their own parts, and deliver much of the rest of what they need via drones. Additionally, troops need reliable electric power and high-speed networking capabilities .

We need to get back to basics, where soldiers can win in an austere environment. ”We are operating on the assumption that future ground combat against other capable militaries is more likely to involve smaller units who have basic supplies of fuel, food and water, and not much else, 

Some of those austerity requirements are self-imposed, because the biggest threats to troops could come from advanced enemy forces pinpointing their locations via the electromagnetic signatures generated by their power generation or communications equipment. So those forces will need to be able to operate independently, constantly on the move, with little-or-no-communications.

Marines will need technologies that let them get by for longer periods of time without resupply of fundamental commodities like water. “We’re looking for technology that would be designed to produce or reuse water on-site. We’re looking at air-to-water technology and man-portable water purification,. Right now, our brigade combat teams don’t have the capacity or the capability to distribute 95 percent of their own water requirements or reuse 75 percent of their water requirements. So any emerging technology in this area would be huge to reduce our footprint.”

To cut back on the need for fuel supplies, Marines want to equip units with advanced power technologies — including more efficient equipment that uses less fuel, hydrogen and hybrid technology and microgrids, and portable renewable energy generation capabilities that harness solar and wind power.

Marines will also need the ability to fix their equipment without the expectation that spare parts can be readily flown or trucked in — or having to carry their own — to be able to produce them on-site using additive manufacturing technologies.

No matter how self-sustaining Marine units become, they will need to be resupplied at some point, and supply convoys  are expected to be even more vulnerable to attack in future conflicts than they have been over the last decade So it wants to take as many troops  off of logistics routes as possible and replace them with autonomous vehicles.

“One of the initiatives we have is to look at leader-follower technology, where you have a manned truck in the front and then several unmanned vehicles behind, therefore minimising the amount of manpower you have to have out there. “But we’re also looking at fully-autonomous ground and aerial resupply. 

At the scale of major weapons systems, Marines are doing all it can to make systems maintainable in-theater, rather than having to return them to large depots for repairs or routine upkeep.

To achieve that, the service has begun installing condition monitoring subsystems on its older weapons to collect data on how they’re performing so that units can conduct conditions-based maintenance: fixing individual problems before they cause a breakdown, rather than conducting maintenance only on predetermined schedules.

“This is capturing usage and diagnostic data as well as parametric engineering data like temperature, speed, G-forces through turns, whatever it might be, and then off-ramping that data to the battalion maintenance officer to begin developing corrective action “It can tell us if we have maintenance problems, tech data documentation problems, obsolescence problems or reliability issues.
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And for newer systems, Marines are rethinking the ways in which it ensures its weapons will be as sustainable as possible once they reach the battlefield. In the past, extensive analyses of weapons’ maintainability, reliability and sustainment costs were conducted in the early stages of their development, but hasn’t tended to revisit those questions once a system is fielded. So Marines are working to redesign the way product support strategies required of every major weapons systems are developed.

What do Marines demand in terms of design work and performance? How did the system perform in tests? And how’s it actually proving out in the operational battlespace? That’s proving to be a very powerful oversight mechanism.”

We’re taking a look at the requirements our capability developers outline for us in terms of performance characteristics: What are our supply availability measures? What is the mean time to repair, how maintainable, reliable, available should the system be? 

We’re linking those requirements to what we’re calling an operational sustainment review where we bring weapons systems  back into the building and reviewing all of those integrated product support elements. 

It takes patience to teach Marines how to make sure all their equipment shows up where they can use it.

Deploying aircraft requires focused efforts by all stakeholders to ensure logistics resources are available to support the Fleet introduction to include funding, spares, tools, support equipment, information systems support, and training.

The summit was primarily built to maximise communication, elevate problems, and arrive at solutions. Most aircraft have a unique maintenance and support structure, making it difficult to implement best practices across the fleet.

"The logistics process, capabilities and organisations must be systematically assessed for its readiness. Every military activity or exercise is an opportunity for assessing logistics performance, but it is rare that military exercises comprehensively test and assess operational sustainability and logistics readiness. Fewer still are those exercises that test logistics readiness through a major deployment performed at short-notice; a phase of an operation that demands all supporting agencies are ready."

There must be a high state of materiel readiness across the force. In addition to appropriately funding the sustainment of equipment, and the establishment of appropriate stocks in appropriate areas to enable operational contingencies, the means of sustaining equipment must be as appropriate for support operations as they are for efficiency in garrison. Failures in materiel readiness are often replicated in major sustainability issues on operations, and necessitate consequential actions such as switching parts between aircraft to achieve desired operational readiness outcomes."

Marine Corps leadership utilise unreliable information when making decisions about major end items and spare parts because Information contained in the Marine Corps legacy logistics and supply information systems is significantly inconsistent & inaccurate.

We believe this occurs because Marine Corps guidance does not sufficiently define the respective roles and responsibilities for Marine Corps logistics information systems.

So this results in confusion among personnel in various Marine Corps commands about who is responsible for the accuracy of different elements contained in the systems. Inconsistencies and inaccuracies also occurred, in part, because Marine Corps guidance lacks adequate operating procedures and business rules for legacy logistics information systems. 

Marine Corps personnel in the Fleet are not aware of, or are not in compliance with, current operation procedures and business rules. We found the Marine Corps has insufficient assurance that most important information is transitioning to Global Combat Support Systems.

Logistics Modernisation Programme system was not designed with the functionality to identify receiving and invoice documents stored in another system. So it wasn’t possible to identify the amounts it previously credited for inventory items returned for repair. 

System did not provide sufficient, accurate, and appropriate documentation to support the costs recorded for sampled inventory transactions in capital working fund.
Result comes from ineffectively performed discovery and corrective action phase activities of the fiscal operating space related to capital fund inventory business processes.

Class deviations requires  contracting personnel to make determinations of good supply schedule order deals for equipment and fixed services. A deviation is the issuance or use of a policy, procedure, solicitation provision, written contract section, method, or practice of conducting logistics actions of any kind at any stage of the process inconsistent with Logistics Rules. A class deviation is a change from guidance that affects more than one contract action.

Specifically, the System did not: 1) detail standard logistics operating procedures, flowcharts, and narratives describing inventory business processes; 2) identify the key logistics positions that needed to be contacted to identify, maintain, and provide key supporting documentation for the transactions associated with inventory processes; and 3) create corrective action plans to remediate known documentation deficiencies

A new enhanced Logistics data analytics tool is helping Marines keep its aircraft in the air with greater consistency, giving analysts insight into key readiness data. The tool aims to bring a predictive capacity to aviation readiness, giving planners a view into potential problems before they arise. 

We can drill down and very quickly say, 'There’s your problem right there!' whereas before I had to take one spreadsheet and match it to another spreadsheet, and meld them together. That could take up a lot of time depending on how big the problem actually was.. 

Readiness has been an issue for Marines in recent years. The ability to fly when and as needed “is in a precarious position since it has been subject  to a decade of high-tempo work overstressing the systems needed to keep aircraft in flying shape. At the same time, Marines has been “challenged to recover full productivity due to budget cuts.
The net result is that planes spend too long on the ground. The answer from the Logistics and Maintenance Analysis Division is better data management.  Previously, vital information on aircraft status, parts and workflow has often been inaccessible.  

“An analyst would go into a database, pull the data, clean it up, and then the data would lead them to something else where they would have to go to another database and do the same thing over and over.“
The new logisitcs system is aiming to smooth things out. “The point was to do some analytics to find out what the root causes were, what the correlations where that might be causing the airplanes to be down,” “But the system was being used in a very limited way, and we saw bigger possibilities in it.” 

To build a smoother data analytics mechanism, developers had to overcome territorial hurdles, connected databases from many outside sources.  “We didn’t own all those databases and very often the owners of those other databases don’t want people mucking around in their data. They have firewalls and things like that they didn’t want us to penetrate. “So we had to do a lot of work just to get access to these databases, to demonstrate that we weren’t going to break it.” 
The tool now cuts across multiple databases to give a more comprehensive view than was previously available. The tool pulls together all the data from all those sources and presents it in a manner that can be easily reviewed. Instead of looking at a spreadsheet you get a graph: Here’s how many airplanes are down. Here are the list of components they are down for.” 

Users can drill down into the data to correlate present shortages against historical trends. “In the total population of aircrafts, how many were down for this reason? The tools will tell you what components in those systems were holding those airplanes down. It will tell you what the parts and the subcomponents and the status.

This in turn gives planners an opportunity to become proactive. Deeper analytics make it possible to watch the entire inventory of aircraft for places where problems are likely to arise and to take preemptive active. 

The tool starts to move us into proactive, projected space. It will set a baseline for a system, component or subcomponent using the latest several years worth of data on failures across those systems: Here’s how often it fails. If you move away from that baseline it will give you a heat map, a yellow light that shows you are failing more often than expected.

“The more often the system fails, the more warnings you will get. If we are proactive as soon as we see those initial warnings, we can take action before the supply system runs out of parts and before the maintenance system gets backlogged. “We can get ahead of the problem.” 

“It has let us make the right decisions on divesting our inventory. We’re still providing the right parts where soldiers need them. Some of that was linking together what had been our legacy systems to get a clear picture of what our inventory posture is on any given day, but we also have a view into our contracting processes so that we can see when new procurements are going to be delivered, when the items that are out for repair are going to come back, when all of the items that are in transit are going to be delivered to our customers. 

“We’re now taking these capabilities to streamline and automate our business processes down to the shop floor.  “They’re using the tool in support of detailed production activities, and we’re now managing millions of transactions a day.”

Much of that work is happening via the recent deployment of mobile devices distributed to workers at depots where WiFi infrastructure, tablets and barcode scanners are beeing deployed to replace the mountains of paper that used to be necessary to specify and then document each turn of a screw on a helicopter, a truck or a tank.

“Before, if you were at one location taking apart a helicopter for an overhaul, that was all done manually: the engine goes through various work centers, the rotor blades go somewhere else, and a lot of people touch those components and use a lot of new parts before it comes back together into the helicopter at the end.

You can imagine the stack of paper as that process goes on. We’ve eliminated that with automated technologies so that all the labour, the parts consumed, the financials that link to all of that are all inside the tool, and you only have a couple pieces of paper moving around with barcodes that link back to all this information.”

“Now, we’re moving beyond infrastructure as a service and embracing platform tools as a service, adopting new capabilities to further enhance readiness. We cannot conduct tomorrow's operations using yesterday's processes and procedures. 

We need to understand the leading indicators to readiness, and getting in front of the  logistics challenges so we are marching forward to the technology of the future.

1. Create methods describing whole life cycle of a virtual production enterprise, including the design transactions among potential partners as part of the strategic activity.

2. Establish set of Reference Models to allow the representation of virtual production relationships to include design system teams, the operational business process and external constraints

3. Stand up performance measurement systems to help in assessment, decision-making and control of the production virtual organisation.

4. Utilise network engineering tools to solve specialised problems of the production business.

5. Employ Information Infrastructure model to support all the Virtual production Enterprise activities.

6. Build existing complementary approaches in only one architecture.

7. Improve result architecture incorporating new techniques, methods, models and templates. 

8. Validate usability and application, carry out real enterprise integration projects, mostly in sectors with small and medium-sized enterprises 

9. Organise knowledge and experience obtained in primary architecture 

10. Develop particular architectures and specialised tools focus on necessities of every enterprise activity type

One of the main underlying trends in Training development is the focus on agent models, protocols, and mechanisms to support the collaboration of pre-existing entities in distributed real-world scenarios, be it among organisations, among Troops, or among Troops and organisations.

Site Visit Executive must continually assess approaches to systems training/engineering, including use of agent models, simulation results, artificial intelligence techniques, and tools supporting training process so it is possible to stay ahead of demands for new and upgraded weapons systems. 

Using agent models is not a new concept; however, digital engineering will address long-standing challenges associated with complexity, uncertainty, and rapid change in deploying defense systems. By providing for more agile and responsive development, digital training/engineering supports engineering excellence and provides a foundation for mission success in the future. 

Realising end-to-end digital enterprises, automating tasks and processes, and making smarter, faster decisions all require next frontier of technologies to transform the way agents and machines interact. Advances in artificial intelligence have given rise to behavioural technologies capable of performing tasks that traditionally required intelligence of commanders in the field. 

Covering all requirements of modern military logistics enterprise simulations is not easy problem. We propose two agent-based technologies for logistics support on two different levels: intra-enterprise and extra-enterprise level-- can be used simultaneously or together. 

The standard configuration consists of several independent systems linked to the virtual organisation by agent-based decision support technology in various fields of logistics – maintenance planning, supply chain decision-making models, simulation, extra-enterprise access, etc. 

Although established architectures have many good points, all these architectures can be improved, since they have not completely generated the necessary digital modeling techniques and adequate execution tools for the different kinds of enterprise architectures and specialised tools focus on necessities of every type of enterprise activity.

Integration of the Simulation exercise that we have carried out at in different logistics scenarios validated that the agent-based technology is viable in situations where the maintenance planning problem is constantly changing e.g. project driven production, and requires frequent and continuous re-planning. 

In these Readiness Simulations the collective aspects of the agent technology have been exploited. At the same time we have identified a great potential of the technology in situations where the planning problem is characterised by complex processes but it features some of the internal logistics. 

Integration of virtual enterprises must be developed and their use must be populated through examples and application experiences. The objective is to develop and validate a step forward in the state of the art of Digital Architectures for Enterprise Integration. 

 Objective consists of architecture section selection to describe and present all the necessary activities to establish, carry out and complete an enterprise integration programme for any kind of enterprise. 

Requirements and components are put together by digital standards teams. Any kind of proposal for an enterprise integration reference architecture can be evaluated under certification criteria.

In the case of the high volume production/maintenance availabilities, where not only collective aspects of agent simulation technology have been used but also the integrative capabilities of agents have been exploited e.g. integration of the linear programming heavy-duty solver.

In simulations where the planning metrics are widely distributed and not fully available the agent technologies provide an robust integrative and distributed planning framework for supply chain administration and virtual production/maintenance organisations formation. 

Strong reliance on standards will contribute to facilitate the interfacing of existing applications with the virtual infrastructure, but unfortunately not all classes of information that need to be exchanged among virtual agents are covered by existing standards. 

Initiatives of application agent groups contribute to facilitate this process. In general, it is necessary to develop some interface/mapping layer, at each enterprise, to adequately have this enterprise interacting with virtual infrastructure. 

In the case that an enterprise fails to perform its duties, the Virtual Enterprise must be reconfigured to replace the failing enterprise with another one. To support this functionality it is nice to have a distributed digital process plan/model tool to allow for re-planning and re-scheduling of logistics processes.

To support function of Virtual Enterprise-- independent of Virtual Enterprise size there is a need for a Virtual Enterprise coordinator. to monitor distributed logistics process Job Status and comparing it to Virtual Enterprise plans as described in the contracts. 

Application vendors are faced with a challenge when trying to provide Digital Twin performance measurement functionality within their products. Users often wish to include metrics relating to information not residing within the vendor’s application database. This is especially the case when measuring the performance of cross-functional and inter-enterprise processes, which involve drawing information about any functional department within a company, or about customer/supplier activities. 

We offer platforms to help logistics units join on-demand prototype networks and access to suppliers. Our application solution allows print/repair shops to join an on-demand prototype network, adding their capacities to it and enabling them to selling those capacities via their own networked shop..

It is increasingly common for the manufacturer of a complex product to purchase much of the content in the product from other companies. For example, an automotive manufacturer might buy seats from one company, brake systems from another, air conditioning from a third, and electrical systems from a fourth, and manufacture only the chassis, body, and powertrain in its own facilities. 

“We basically connect the different network shops in the background to establish the networks. Our Enterprise solution gives users access to the on-demand prototype suppliers— as well as the ability to compare their internal capacities with those of the companies on the network.

While these are recommended supply chain measures, it is rare for one organisation to control its whole supply chain performance. Supply chains are typically comprised of many value-adding trading partners controlling the portions they interact in . While this might be the case, supply chain tactics principles dictate that significant benefits can accrue when integrated inter-enterprise processes are in place, to link and optimise the supply chain.

Here we describe single Phases of cooperation life-cycle on Enterprise-to-Enterprise level searching of the possible product support collaborators. First, agents have to contact possible partners. There is wide field for future research in the domain of automatic search cooperation and contacting possible partners.

This Blockchain approach ensures the trustworthiness of the partners transferred from real-life to the agents cooperation. Each agent is equipped by the addresses and the security certificates and every partner can be authenticated using standard key methods. Every agent can be connected to many partner agents according to defined internal cooperation rules.

Once the agents are connected together, each agent provides the list of available product support capabilities to partners. It is possible to propose different capabilities to different partners. During this phase agents form basic cooperation network, receiving information suitable for effective collaboration in the next phases. During the life-cycle of the cooperation, agents subscribe information of the changes on product support resources on already established platforms.

Once you have your network in place, you‘re ready to consider our challenge in depth. The transition from producing many parts from a few orders to producing a few parts from many orders isn’t easy, especially when it comes to quoting.

“It’s definitely one of the biggest roadblocks right now. “Even if you’re fast, it usually takes significant block of time to prepare a quotation for an order. There’s also a lot of ‘communication “ping-pong” at the beginning: someone sends a request, you check if the part is printable, it’s not, so you request changes back and forth, and it just goes on like that.”

Fortunately, you can avoid all that communication “ping-pong” by automating your quotations and printability checks. Our Enterprise Platform is designed to do just that. In addition to giving you direct access to our network of print parts suppliers, the platform can also evaluate models for pricing and printability, include side-by-side comparisons of internal 3D printers with those in your on-demand prototypes network

These tools give us complete visibility on manufacturing and service operations, a capability we now have for the first time. These applications also help us improve the accuracy of our work orders; engage in more efficient production scheduling; enable interaction with our diverse vendor supply chain and reduce logistics delays for parts.

We have also noticed most legacy applications were designed for a enterprise-centered local operation and to be operated by agents. In order to have these applications supplying information to or consuming information from the virtual network, it is clearly necessary to extend their functionality. 

Interoperability among enterprise applications represents a major challenge for supporting the rapid formation of virtual scenarios, in response to new operational opportunities. On the other hand it is important to have in mind that each enterprise has its own way of doing business. 

Furthermore the level of information sharing among virtual agents is likely to either change of the trust level among partners or with adjustments to configuration in time. Therefore, flexible virtual coordination and information visibility rights definition mechanisms are required to support both the autonomy and change order properties in behaviour of virtual agents.

Multi-agent solutions exist for low-level scheduling or control systems as well as product-configuration and quote phases to be used for short- and long-term production planning and supply chain administration.

Multi-agent systems on intra-enterprise level and extra-enterprise level are independent in the digital population point of view. Agents used on intra-enterprise level are operating inside an enterprise represents many units or processes in the unit. On extra-enterprise level, whole unit is represented by a single agent, providing all abilities and services, available in the company.

If agents on both levels are used, a special Digital Twin agent can exists that bind both levels together. For digital application purposes, both levels can be modeled together as a Digital Twin to study and improve their abilities.

Multi agent systems can be used also for a digital simulation and modeling of the production process or the supply chain, where they easily simulate an independence of involved parts. These tools can help to answer non-trivial tasks – how changes in single component will affect the production process or supply chain as a whole.


Must focus on optimising maintenance workload tracking across the enterprise and at Sustainment Centre level across all complexes by serving as a single entry point to outside customers with capability to identify workload capabilities and shortfalls across the enterprise and use this information to pursue new/repatriated workload. 

Logistics Complexes operate with some different business processes creating conditions where complex cannot provide standardised guidance. Does not have optimum visibility of capability, capacity, or cost across enterprise. 

An improved, single-interface solution will serve to share backshop and local manufacturing workload solutions among the complexes, reduce costs, accelerate feedback loops, and develop greater local manufacturing agility.
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Must have a robust and agile single-interface solution that provides optimum visibility and improvement opportunities for the Maintenance Repair/Overhaul enterprise based on capabilities and capacities utilising the guidance reflected in the Technology Repair Centre construct. 

There are many programmes, processes and offices working multiple issues related to capacity, manpower workload and so on, but no aggregated metrics to allow assessments at the complex level. Assessments are performed in a variety of efforts throughout the enterprise but they do not use the same methodology. 

Even if complex had good metrics on capability and capacity, the lack of common equipment and tools makes temporary shifts to balance back shop and local manufacturing workload very difficult. 

Well-designed enterprise-level Strategic Sustainment Frameworks are required to provide an overall site picture of current and future workload in areas such as backlog of workloads, surplus capacity, manpower requirements by skills, facilities capabilities, machine capabilities and space requirements. 

Complex is at risk of discarding essential equipment and skill sets without Strategic Sustainment Teams in place to review in-house repair shop capabilities and verify interdependent capabilities are retained before restructures or consolidations. There is no enterprise level strategy in place to review any potential short or long-term workload reassignments. Repatriation efforts are not prioritised based on enterprise wide needs.

Must leverage collaborative innovation of numerous participants across multi-agent enterprise, permitting shared risk, maximised reuse of assets and reduced total ownership costs. 

Combination of open systems architecture and an open multi-agent model permits acquisition of modular and interoperable system, allowing for system elements to be added/modified and replaced over duration of mobile exercises. 

Modular open architecture includes updating key interfaces within the system and relevant design disclosure. Key enabler is adoption of an open multi-agent model requires doing mission status updates in a transparent way.

Smart to allow for system elements removal and/or support by different groups throughout the duration of exercise so afford opportunities for enhanced competition and innovation.

Agents communicate digitally, and currently use point addressing. Messages do not persist outside of agents, and agents do not move over the network. Fixed market protocol is used but also provides for field unit operators behind component agents to communicate directly with one another using Standard work orders.

The initial configuration of component agents and characteristic agents is defined when the system is initialised, but component agents can engage in markets for other characteristics as the system runs. 

The fundamental challenge in applying agents to both planning and control is satisfying a global criterion on the basis of parallel local decisions. In spite of the natural benefit that centralisation has in dealing with control criteria, case studies show that many users have found agents an even better approach. 

Operational systems must be maintained, and it is much easier to maintain a set of well-bounded modules than to make changes to a large programme. The move toward supply chains means that the manufacturing system is geographically distributed, and agent decentralisation reduces communication bottlenecks and permits local parts of the enterprise to continue operation during temporary lapses in connectivity. 

Competitiveness increasingly depends on adjusting system operations frequently to track customer requirements, benefiting from how agent systems can be changed. The ability of agents to deal with poorly structured systems is less important in the operation of an engineered system than in its design. 

Accounting for executing the modeled behavior of agents and mission space is dependent on the classification of the agent-based system and support for collaborative model development and model repositories. Collaborative modeling enables dispersed modelers to develop modular model levels both coupled and uncoupled. 

In such application based cooperative working scene, model repositories are essential to support efficient and systematic model reuse and integration. Such repositories offer many benefits for maintaining and using models. Repositories can be built from widely employed relational systems to be scaleable and provide standard queries for access to and from model content. 

But many challenges remain to support collaborative development of levels based modular models and components within distributed and networked mission space. For example, a lot of work is required to develop workable schemes to assign ownership rights of enterprises and within enterprises and functional teams. participating in a model development effort.

1. Typical virtual enterprise to include large scale engineering systems involved in system build-- emphasis is put on operation of virtual enterprise and on the support for business process definition and supervision. 

2. Network topology situations show variable characteristics some enterprises can join or leave the alliance according to the phases of the business process or other market factors. 

3. Duration of some alliances of virtual enterprises established towards a single business opportunity, and are dissolved at the end of such process

4. Many sectors have established supply chains with an almost fixed structure-- little variation in terms of suppliers or clients during the virtual enterprise life cycle consider temporary interaction with non-member enterprises such as occasional suppliers

5. Supporting infrastructure must handle many virtual enterprise participation spaces and cope with strict cooperation and information visibility rules, to preserve the requirements of every individual enterprise

6. Dominant company defines "the rules of the game" and imposes its own standards on others in terms of business process models, information exchange mechanisms and access rights

7. Different organisation can be found in some supply chains, without a dominant company so nodes cooperate on an equal basis, preserving their autonomy, but joining their core competencies. 

8. Once successful alliance is formed, companies may realise the mutual benefits of joint control of resources and skills tends to create joint coordination structure 

9. Visibility scope related to the topology and coordination i.e., how far, along the network can one node see the virtual enterprise configuration like direct neighbors ie, suppliers, clients

10. Monitoring of order fulfillment, planning, scheduling, workload distribution are examples of advanced task supervision and virtual enterprise coordination to include extensive visibility scope agreed in enforced contracts among all members