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Top 10 Prototype Design Tips Create Functional User Solutions Avoid Product Time/Resource Expenditure

7/21/2019

While it’s great to have so many prototyping solutions available, there’s no silver bullet. The “best” tools to use depend entirely on your organisational structure and the immediate purpose for the prototype. Not only that, but this purpose will change throughout the product lifecycle.

While there are many prototyping tools on the market, most have their own unique advantage that can make them useful during some phase of the product lifecycle. It’s important to first consider your business objectives and practices before selecting the right tools to use. Picking technologies first can severely handicap your prototyping process, short-circuiting your ability to optimise and find an adaptable solution.

Look into how digital prototyping is helping the manufacturing industry. Manufacturers today need to come to terms with a raft of complex challenges. Being able to deliver strategically differentiated products is complicated in itself, but even more so when customers are demanding greater customisation and faster speed to market at ever-lower costs.

One area in which manufacturers are finding ways to meet this challenge is product design, and many are learning that innovation in complex product design techniques can deliver significant benefits in product quality, cost, speed and customer satisfaction.

Prototype evaluation should include prediction and simulation of manufacturing processes and production planning both during the conceptual design when design data are incomplete and during the later stages when the design has matured after several design iterations. The risks of transition to full production can be reduced by integrating virtual design and testing with manufacturing simulation.

Manufacturability is a condition that must be satisfied before a design can be considered valid. Lack of any prototyping of the manufacturing stage heightens the risks of having to carry out design changes shortly after commissioning expensive dies, tools and other production equipment.

Process planning involves selection of the type and sequence of the manufacturing operations that are needed to create a component efficiently. Once a design is expressed as a 2D or 3D engineering drawing, production process planning is needed to identify the optimum configuration of manufacturing processes using the most appropriate materials and running at the lowest possible cost.

Computer-based workflow created where conceptual design, engineering, manufacturing, and procurement teams are connected by a single digital model. This simulates the complete product, and gives engineers the ability to design, visualise, and simulate their products digitally.

The availability and affordability of advanced computer technology has paved the way for increasing utilisation of prototypes that are digital and created in computer-based environments, i.e. they are virtual as opposed to being physical.

The rapid increase in both computing power of computational methods and models of physical phenomena and the growing ability to transport results between various models are improving the scope of applications, robustness, accuracy, realism and cost effectiveness of virtual prototyping technology at an incredibly fast pace Virtual prototyping. consists of many capabilities, the best known of which is the creation and viewing of 3D solid models with various colours and surface textures.

The purposes for which prototypes are used are universal, irrespective of whether the prototype is a physical or virtual one. In general, prototypes are required for three main purposes: communication, design development, and design testing and verification

The system, subsystem or product at a given level of the design process and their functions must be defined, and the scope of the tests must be determined e.g. short-term normal or extreme long-term conditions. Using computer simulation, all or parts of the possible scenarios can be simulated in order to study the behaviour of the selected functions, system or subsystems involved.

Accuracy of prototyping depends on faithful simulation of all the factors representing the product and its intended operating environment. Such factors include product specifed geometry, functions and performance and the intended fabrication technology, as well as the human users and their interaction with the product.

A high level of detail must be incorporated in a digital model to achieve accurate virtual prototypes. The accuracy of all the analytical processes and models need to be assessed to measure the correlation between predicted results and the corresponding physical equivalents.

Prototypes are ideal for testing an idea, improving on the look and feel of a design and for getting a sense of how the market is going to respond. After all, most successful campaigns have started off with prototypes that brought an enthusiastic response which helped fund more development work.

But it’s at this point, when a project moves from prototype to new product introduction, that many great ideas falter. Problems may arise because the techniques used to make a prototype are different than those for mass production. Product developers need to be aware of these differences and be prepared to make engineering, forecasting and design changes accordingly.

1. Design Plans: Get Started with Prototyping

Prototyping is an integral part of Design Plans and User Experience design in general because it allows us to test our ideas quickly and improve on them in an equally timely fashion.

Why is prototyping so important in the design process? Moreover, how does it help you create design solutions? Before we start making prototypes to test our assumptions, let’s get a closer understanding behind the what, how and why of prototyping.

Imagine this situation: It’s an exciting new project, something your team had spent lots of time brainstorming and planning, then building and crafting to perfection. You did all you could to ensure it was just right, with all the necessary features. You tried to ensure that you gave design more focus and that your message was crafted well.

The website attracted attention and brought in many interested visitors looking for the products you'd collected on the site, but somehow the product and service providers just weren't interested in testing it out. They seemed comfortable just to keep doing business as usual.. It made no sense to you, but there you were later, having sweated and spent valuable time, money, and resources and even attracting visitors, but no customers.

2. What went wrong?

It's a story repeated time and time again—ideas being executed by people totally focused on for making a dent in the market, making big changes or just completely reinventing the wheel, only to realise right at the end of their journey that they've been wasting their time or focusing on the wrong thing.

This is where prototyping comes in by providing a set of tools and approaches for properly testing and exploring ideas before too many resources get used. Many developers created mockups of real-world objects with the simplest of materials we could get our hands on. There is not much difference between these types of prototypes and the early rough prototypes we may develop at the earlier phases of testing out ideas.

3. What is a Prototype?

A prototype is a simple experimental model of a proposed solution used to test or validate ideas, design assumptions and other aspects of its conceptualisation quickly and cheaply, so designers involved can make appropriate refinements or possible changes in direction.

Prototypes can take many forms, and just about the only thing in common the various forms have is that they are all tangible forms of your ideas. They don’t have to be primitive versions of an end product, either—far from it. Simple sketches or storyboards used to illustrate a proposed experiential solution, rough paper prototypes of digital interfaces, and even role-playing to act out a service offering an idea are examples of prototypes. In fact, prototypes do not need to be full products: you can prototype a part of a solution to test that specific part of your solution.

Prototypes can be quick and rough — useful for early-stage testing and learning — and can also be fully formed and detailed — usually for testing or pilot trials near the end of the project.

Prototyping is about bringing conceptual or theoretical ideas to life and exploring their real-world impact before finally executing them. All too often, design teams arrive at ideas without enough research or validation and expedite them to final execution before there is any certainty about their viability or possible effect on the target group.

4. Why We Need to Prototype

Research conducted during the early stages of your Design project does not tell you everything you need to know in order to create the optimal solution. Regardless of whether you have researched thoroughly and gathered a large body of information, or whether your development sessions have resulted in what many perceive as a world-changing solution, testing is still crucial for success.

Design teams can easily become fixated on the research artifacts they have gathered during the earlier phases of exploration, creating a bias towards their ideas. By prototyping and then testing those prototypes, you can reveal assumptions and biases you have towards your ideas, and uncover insights about your users that you can use to improve your solutions or create new ones.

You can use prototyping as a form of research even before other phases in design allowing you to explore problem areas in interfaces, products or services, and spot areas for improvement or innovation.

5. Prototype to Define, Ideate, and Test

We can — and should — use prototyping as part of various stages of Design. You can use prototyping as an ideation method, as it allows you, as well as users, to explore alternative solutions. This is possible because prototypes are physical representations of your solutions, so prototyping allows you to explore by doing. Adopting a ‘explore by doing’ strategy is extremely helpful in letting you derive more value from researching, defining, ideating, and testing.

You can use prototypes to explore problems, ideas, and opportunities within a specific area of focus and test out the impact of incremental or radical changes. Use prototypes in order to better understand the dynamics of a problem, product, or system by physically engaging with them and picking apart what makes them work or fail.

Use prototyping to engage with end users or stakeholders, in ways that reveal deeper insight and more valuable experiences, to inform design decisions going forward. Use prototypes to sell new ideas, motivate buy-in from internal or external stakeholders, or inspire markets toward radical new ways of thinking and doing.

6. How Prototyping Works

One of the essential strategies for Design Bootcamp Toolkit is having a bias towards action: too much analysis leaves you unable to take hold because you will investigate each assumption through active testing, instead of just thinking it through. By using controlled experiments, you can either prove or disprove your assumptions in their real context and thus further refine — or even abandon — your initial idea.

One of the most important aspects of Design is exploring unknown possibilities and uncovering unknown insights. This is the reason the discipline places emphasis on learning and on activities that increase the learning potential of the team. You can boost action-orientated learning by experimenting and exploring the proposed solutions in order to understand what problems may exist with the assumptions behind those solutions. As such, your team can iterate rapidly, modifying your test models and moving you closer and closer to the goal. .

When you prototype, you bring your ideas onto a tangible plane, which will enable you and your team to see and discuss the pros and cons, to learn from users’ feedback, and to create original ideas. So, stop thinking, and start doing now.

7. When to prototype a digital product

The trend toward product prototyping is fast becoming best practice for teams exploring and vetting new concepts. The team could be a startup with a potentially disruptive business model or an established enterprise investigating innovation opportunities or exploring a redesign, but we believe there are also several other important use cases for rapid prototyping in the context of digital product design.

Despite the differences in producing these prototypes, the spirit remains the same: attempt to design a simple and focused feature set that you can use to demonstrate and test against.
In our experience, we’ve seen evidence supporting the value of rapid prototyping time and again and have found that there are a handful of common use cases where it’s most useful.

8. Validating a concept

Probably the most well understood and agreed upon case for prototyping, validating, or de-risking a concept around a new product or feature is as a tried-and-true method for getting feedback from users and team members before embarking on a longer development cycle. Using simple tools, a product team can prototype and test an idea in a matter of days and iterate as needed. In some cases, learning that a product or feature is unwanted, isn’t useful or intuitive, or lacks a real market is just as valuable as receiving positive feedback. The time saved in not pursuing an invalid concept is valuable and opens opportunity to focus elsewhere.

9. Reaching a shared understanding

With a growing emphasis on designers and developers collaborating more closely and earlier in the process, product prototyping can provide a great deal of clarity and shared understanding throughout a team. In the case of code-based prototypes, designers and developers literally have to work together to produce this initial artifact, so speaking the same language from the start is critical, and debates around an approach or constraint happen in real time. The team is on the same page from the outset, and the process can start to become streamlined. With design-led prototypes, developers can review and vet a concept quickly, pointing out any issues that would prohibit a specific approach or treatment. In our experience, even the most technical engineers are still visual and benefit from seeing and walking through a product from a user’s perspective.

10. Before fully redesigning a product

You’ve probably noticed that some of your favorite web applications occasionally change how they look and work with regard to navigation or interaction patterns. How did these companies validate such decisions before developing and releasing these updates? One method is to constantly collect user feedback over time, recording and weighing the issues that are the most desirable and feasible to redesign or add to a product. Some companies do this subtly over time without ever presenting a totally different interface to their users. Others fully redesign, while another approach is splitting off into a new version of a product and allowing users to try it without forcing them to abandon their existing solution.

In any of these cases, prototyping can help evolve your approach and give your team confidence that the new direction is actually a step forward.

The biggest questions arise around how functionally or conceptually similar a new feature is to an existing one, whether any features can be merged or removed, and the related implications to a product’s navigation or interaction model. Prototyping and testing approaches that attempt to answer these questions can lead to productive discourse within the product team as well as answers from usability testing.

Regardless of the use case, prototyping has an important function in product design and can increase the speed of learning and iterating while enabling everyone involved to share a common vision. The approach and fidelity of the design are less important than answering important questions with something visual that people can react to before taking the next step forward from there.

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Top 10 Tools Address Digital Prototype Requirements Work With Design Engineering Teams

7/21/2019

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Use of prototypes is a vital activity that can make the difference between successful and unsuccessful entry of new products into competitive markets. Physical prototyping can prove to be very lengthy and expensive, especially if modifications resulting from design reviews involve tool redesign.

The availability and affordability of advanced computer technology has paved the way for increasing utilisation of digital prototypes created in computer-based scenarios, i.e. they are virtual as opposed to being physical.

Prototyping and evaluation measures are inseparable from the design process in the manufacture of a product. Many physical prototypes require very expensive and time consuming efforts, so the technology of Virtual Reality Tech is required to achieve quick and precise decisions. VR is required for simulations that require a lot of interaction such as prototype assembly methods.

Modern physical prototyping and virtual prototyping techniques continue to advance and become more powerful. The question is which options are most appropriate? Several criteria, including physical, operational and application considerations, need to be satisfied by the chosen prototyping methods. These requirements include but are not limited to time, cost, material properties, modeling accuracy and reliability, size, quality, level of detail, etc.

Existing prototype methods may or may not satisfy such requirements depending on the design requirements. Therefore, the merits of each option need to be assessed against the individual requirements of each enterprise and its specific products. Ultimately, the ideal prototyping solution, whichever form it may take, is the one that can quickly, and accurately, generate a design that will have high quality and low production cost in the shortest time.

Successful virtual prototyping requires comprehensive integration of and communication between various analysis tools so that new products are designed with inputs from all concerned. This in turn requires easy data conversion and compatibility.

The implementation of virtual prototyping is more successful and less difficult to achieve at component level than at system level because the latter necessitates comprehensive modeling of complex interactions between constituent subassemblies and components. virtual prototyping at the system level may only be achieved with full integration of product and process data, although it can be expensive in the short term. However, integration can give long-term dividends through more effective virtual prototype solutions.

Repeated, efficient, and extensive use of prototypes is a vital activity that can make the difference between successful and unsuccessful entry of new products into the competitive world market. In this respect, physical prototyping can prove to be very lengthy and expensive, especially if modifications resulting from design reviews involve tool redesign. The availability and affordability of advanced computer technology has paved the way for increasing utilisation of prototypes that are digital and created in computer-based environments, i.e. they are virtual as opposed to being physical.

The rapid increase in both computing power of computational methods and models of physical phenomena and the growing ability to transport results between various models are improving the scope of applications, robustness, accuracy, realism and cost effectiveness of virtual prototyping technology at an incredibly fast pace Virtual prototyping. consists of many capabilities, the best known of which is the creation and viewing of 3D solid models with various colours and surface textures

The purposes for which prototypes are used are universal, irrespective of whether the prototype is a physical or virtual one. In general, prototypes are required for three main purposes: communication, design development, and design testing and verification

The system, subsystem or product at a given level of the design process and their functions must be defined, and the scope of the tests must be determined e.g. short-term normal or extreme long-term conditions. Using computer simulation, all or parts of the possible scenarios can be simulated in order to study the behaviour of the selected functions, system or subsystems involved.

Selecting the right type of prototype for your project depends on your stage in the process and your learning goals. If you need to test a complex or involved interaction, you will run into the limits of some tools, and need to move to a real front-end implementation. But you probably don’t need a real back-end implementation unless you truly need persistence across sessions for your prototype.

Basic digital tools can serve most mid-stage needs, saving significant time by avoiding having to create a real back-end. What matters is that you have an experience that looks and feels like the real thing—but it doesn’t have to work like one.

The right tools will allow you to quickly build prototypes without needing lots of time or expertise. All these tools have some advantages and disadvantages. But before getting into selecting the tools, you must define the selection criteria to make an informed decision.

Are there tools your organisation is already using that are appropriate for different prototypes? Is there a possibility to re-use some of them? It helps to create a gradual change in organisation instead of a radical change and helps in adoption of the learn-build-test-repeat model. What types of prototypes does your organisation not have tools for? Discover your gaps, and find new tools to fill them.

Requirements lead to security questions: Who should have access to your prototype? Will users need to create an account? Who will be able to make changes to the prototype? Are there security provisions that must be in place for new information you collect? Is there an established way to access actual customer information in an unfinished product, while maintaining your standards?

Most of the time, prototypes are testing beds, and whatever gets built as part of the testing prototypes is discarded. But that need not be the case, if you want to use elements of the prototype design in your actual product. Especially in later stages, choose tools that will help in the transfer.

Based on your stage of the process and prototype needs, consider criteria tradeoffs involved in these decisions, so it’s always valuable to have all necessary information before you make any decisions.

Building prototypes and fostering team innovation is different from everyday work. It’s all about building a different model, developing learning goals, and adapting your standard processes. So to be successful, it’s crucial that your innovations are separated from daily organisational operations and constructed carefully. Remember to be patient, smart, and strategic at every step of the process.

Using a template makes it much easier to get a good result. Then start with digital prototyping. What’s amazing with this kind of zero-cost prototyping is that you can upload designs for instant quotes—with no commitment to buying. When determining how to make products, this step is very important because you can upload numerous variations of your product designs to easily and immediately see what design choices will decrease costs.

Once the digital prototype looks good, print it out on paper. This is the first way to get a sense of what your product will look like at 100% scale. It’s easy—and it’s free. You’d be surprised how easy it is to misjudge scale on screen.

When you get these initial samples in hand, take a really good look at the design. Is it what you envisioned? Do any slotted parts fit together perfectly? If not, now is the time to adjust so they better align with what you had intended. The result of this revised design will naturally be a new prototype, followed by another round of assessment.

Continue revising the design until you’re confident in the quality of your product. Next, make a small batch in the final material of choice. Here, you can evaluate if the material you chose will work as expected and be strong enough for its intended use. Once again, you’ll want to get some sample product in hand so users can test it out and provide feedback before you commit to a large order.

Finally, once you’ve gotten to a point where users are giving good reviews of the product, you can make a larger order in accordance with market demand.

1. What do I want to learn from my next prototype test?

You’ll want prototypes that clarify and emphasize initial plans to users, rather than focusing on the unrelated assumptions of user experience flows and other areas. Later in the process, this may change.

2. What are my constraints?

Consider the amount of time and resources it makes sense to invest at the current stage of testing. Is there enough promise and momentum that it’s worthwhile to involve designers and engineers in the development of a prototype?

3. What are my requirements?

Factor into the design process whether or not the value propositions with which you are experimenting require a mobile app prototype. Or maybe you’ll need a website that simulates advanced interactions.

4. Why Prototype?

People working in Design, and Engineering fields are very familiar with the benefits of prototyping, but let’s look at it from the client’s perspective. What are the main reasons that a client should want to prototype digital products and experiences before committing to a full on build?

There are a couple of main reasons: First, when you prototype, you get a first glance into what features your audience will actually use. Testing prototypes to ensure that what you’re building connects with and will be used by your audience is always recommended. Second, it saves money. Plain and simple. If you prototype, test, and iterate on a product early on – you will save a ton of cash before hardcore and expensive engineering even begins.

5. When should you prototype?

Prototyping is particularly useful when used alongside the Design process of product creation. It is the mechanism through which innovation and creativity can be unleashed. The stages of Design Stages include Motivation, and Implementation. Prototyping is useful in each stage.

During the motivation phase, we conduct field research to gather insight from the world around us. This includes doing a comparative analysis of competitive products and observing elements within our environments that contribute to our vision for a product. Creating low fidelity prototypes at this stage often adds fire to our inspiration.

We keep prototyping and testing through Implementation. In our experience, almost every significant project ‘pivots’ at least a little when you receive feedback on a prototype. Your first idea is rarely the best, and prototyping gives you that information. The prototypes used during Implementation get successively higher fidelity until you end up testing something that is nearly identical to the final product. That typically takes some iterations, but each iteration is well worth the time.

6. How do you prototype?

Prototypes aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Every project is different, and each stage during a project needs various levels of prototyping. Before jumping into higher fidelity models, it’s important to reiterate how important the lowest fidelity prototypes are to product design. Low-fidelity sketches, whiteboard sessions and lightly documented ideation are all more efficient than jumping into or even doing high-fidelity wireframes and information architectures. Those high-fidelity documents usually incur a lot of time to produce and become out of date almost immediately after creating them.

There is also value in high-fidelity prototyping. Once we’ve begun testing, we can start establishing an understanding of what our audience likes about the product we’re building. We can confidently start engineering some features that have the potential of making it into the final product.. By continuing to test these hi-fidelity prototypes, we get closer and closer to eventually landing on things that we’re pretty sure we’re going to build. But it doesn’t stop there.

We continue to “prototype” products as we jump into final engineering. At this point, it’s not technically a prototype anymore. It is real, working product that will eventually deploy. However, as the build progresses, we continue testing with users so that we can watch them break what we’re building, fix what’s broken, and do it all over again until the final product is ready. It’s important to note that ‘final’ does not mean ‘perfect’. If you wait for perfect, you run the risk of getting beat to market by a slightly less than perfect competitor, and you will lose your edge.

7. Digital prototyping

Using a Digital Prototyping workflow enables design to take place in swift parallel across all technical specialties involved. A digitally prototyped design keeps all specialists updated on exactly what is happening in every other specialty as the product or part moves through the design process and towards final production. For example, product-management sub-programs allow for on-the-fly updating of a bill of materials. So when a product's surface is bent or shrunk, the amount of on-order sheet metal changes immediately.

8. Creating designs

Digital Prototyping can bring particular benefits to users who are looking to create useful designs. Tools for Digital Prototyping, providing a comprehensive, integrated set of design tools for producing and documenting complete digital prototypes that allow designers to simulate how a design will work under real-world conditions before being built.

9. Saving time

Speed to market is an important benefit for most manufacturers, but so too are savings on physical prototypes.. By moving to digital prototyping, companies reduced time to market, cut development, labour and material costs; boost customer satisfaction by allowing customers to collaborate on design; and nearly eliminate waste because design changes were made before steel was cut or plastic shaped. In addition, the company can ‘ship’ models to customers in real time.

10. A valuable solution

The value of design tools is being recognised and embraced by a new generation of engineers and designers accustomed to living in a world that integrates virtual and physical realities into a single, unified reality. This generation of ‘virtual natives,’ with its drive to combine the physical and virtual worlds into one, is transforming existing industries and promising to create new ones.

In manufacturing, virtual design tools and digital prototyping workflows tear down previous barriers, creating a team-like system in which designers, engineers, marketers and end customers collaborate continuously from concept to production. The result is a better designed product that costs less to make, gets to market faster, increases margins, frees internal resources for innovation, and – most importantly of all meets customer requirements.

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Top 10 Prototype Sample Build Steps Test Process Evaluate Design Provide User Working System Function

7/21/2019

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With prototyping you can communicate your ideas in a clear, simple and effective way so your team has clear understanding of the main features and interactions that your product offers. It’s a great way to kick start a new project.

User-centered design means working with your users all throughout the project. With a prototype, you get feedback in early design process to help you find your product issues before you spend any time in high fidelity or code. Who knows, you might discover that you have done it all wrong and start all over.

This is a very important step toward a well designed product, even if you don’t have time. You’d be surprised by the things you’ll discover that have to be changed. Take advantage of exploratory phase and you’ll get only feedback on the global structure. Richer feedback will come with a higher fidelity that contains readable and accurate copy.

Usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology. At this stage, validating your idea is the focus, when you eliminate external factors, you get more valuable feedback.

Vision starts with a firm foundation and carries through with design principles. If you follow agile methodologies, prototyping is even more beneficial as you can kick start your requirements narrative at this early stage. Of course, your prototype has to be tested in high fidelity for final requirements.

Some designers start prototyping directly using Sketch. Many end up spending a lot of time in making it look good. It looks better right? By skipping stages, you also miss a lot of opportunities. Once you put time and effort in something, you get attached to it and you forget that you are still exploring options.

Adapting to increasingly digital markets and taking advantage of digital technologies to improve operations are important goals for nearly every business. Yet, few companies appear to be making the fundamental changes their leaders believe are necessary to achieve these goals.

Many firms try to create new digital services using user-centered design, relying on the learn-build-test-repeat methodology. This requires them to develop concepts until they’re mature enough for scaling. But companies trying to build digital processes for digital service design often underestimate the importance of building an isolated experimental testing environment to test and iterate digital offerings before scaling them.

As your organisation goes digital, it’s important to take into account certain technical and organisational requirements. Experience has shown there are several essential organisational elements to consider before building a technology work space.

The team testing and building a new digital service must be empowered to make decisions without having to wait for permissions or fill out piles of paperwork. This group needs, from the start, sufficient autonomy and freedom. This might mean that they’re allowed to procure new tools or technology without lengthy organisational processes.

Or if there’s a need to iterate quickly, you can modify their infrastructure to make it easy to experiment while maintaining strict standards. It’s also important to have a cross-functional team with representation from technical functions to guide the team as they work on building the work space.

Leadership participates in the project, visits the teams, learns about their progress in informal collaborative format than at structured periodic meetings. It’s also valuable to establish guardrails for decision-making. For instance, you might want to establish monetary limits before the team needs to get outside approval.

The point of a learn-build-test-repeat approach is to learn as you go, so that you’re able to course-correct earlier in the process when changes are much faster and cheaper, instead of at the end only to find you’ve veered far off course. Your ability to course-correct depends on how quickly you learn about choice of prototype.

A prototype is anything that represents your idea, in a tangible format, to actual customers for the purpose of gathering feedback. It is a testable concept about value or technical feasibility. A good prototype minimises the time and cost needed to get smart about a new offering.

Early on, when you’ve identified some key ideas and need to understand which ones are worth pursuing, storyboards or paper mock-ups are appropriate. As you continue, you’ll want to know how a selected idea is best translated into a design.

At this point high-fidelity mock-ups, or a non-production implementation of a key interaction are ideal. In order to observe users interacting with your design and assess real demand, a minimum viable product which customers can interact with in real-time, may be the right choice.

Question to ask can range from understanding the validity of a concept to specific functionality within a service. Do customers value the service? Will they want to use it? Is an app the right method for delivering the service? Will people want the information in multiple tabs or a single scroll down page?

Guided testing is an organised, coordinated version of testing, in which the work space as well as participants are carefully selected to mimic the real world. Guided testing is often the exclusive form of testing for early and mid-stage prototypes, and can continue to be valuable even in later stages. This dialog helps us to get a better understanding of how they do, or don’t, value the digital service construct.

In unguided testing often used with late-stage prototypes large number of participants are given access to the digital service, but no prompts are provided as participants interact with the service. The experience should be authentic, but the behind-the-scenes implementation providing that experience need not be real. For example, team members can operate customer service lines or manually process and fulfill product or service orders. Selected participants will get an opportunity to provide feedback.

1. Why It’s Your Best Move to Always Prototype Your Product

So you’re on your way to creating a product. You have a great product and you are working your way through the design process and identified the target user and market, spent a lot of time brainstorming concepts and checked out your competition. You believe you know what the user wants and what this product needs to be successful. This means it’s time to start prototyping.

Sure, we’ve all heard of prototyping before, and most engineers understood that it is the process of making a pre-production proof of concept model. But what does it really mean to prototype? When should prototyping start in the design process? What are the best ways to manufacture a prototype for your product? And why should you, as an engineer practice rapid prototyping?

2. What Is A Product Prototype Anyway?

As we jump into the world of product prototyping, it’s important to understand how “prototyping” and “a prototype” relate to each other. Prototyping refers to the process of developing and iterating prototypes. It is a design methodology, practice and/or process.

On the other hand, a prototype refers to the actual physical or digital objects generated during the prototyping process. “A prototype is a rudimentary working sample, model, mock-up or just a simulation of the actual product based on which the other forms are developed,” Sometimes, creating a prototype is called materialisation as it is the first step of transforming the virtual or conceptualised design into the real physical form.”

3. Motive behind prototyping

Prototyping validates the design of the actual product, there’s actually more to the product development process. “A prototype isn’t just a part of the product design. It is one of the most integral parts without which future steps of the startup process are nothing but useless.

Beyond determining desirability, prototyping also helps determine feasibility and viability. “Your product or solution should not only satisfy the needs of a user but be easy to implement and have a commercial model as well.

“You are also concerned with testing your ideas and validating your hypotheses about your users. Towards the end of your project, bring the focus to feasibility and viability as well so that your solution can be sustainable.”

While it may seem we are talking about complex products or those with big budgets from well-known brands, that’s actually not the case. Even the simplest of products should be prototyped with low-volume manufacturing before committing to full-scale production runs.

4. Prototyping Methodology

So, what does the “how to make a prototype” process look like? Think of the prototyping steps like a feedback loop: Make a prototype, Test your product, get feedback from users and Refine the design.

“Soliciting feedback on your ideas and prototypes is a core element of the Ideation Phase, and it helps keep the people you’re designing for at the center of your project,” Its also a direct path to designing something that those same people will adopt. If the point of a prototype is to test an idea, then collecting feedback from potential users is what pushes things forward.”

Here’s the problem: What is usually found through the prototyping process is that the first idea isn’t all that great. . Some times you have to failing your way to success. It’s the same for designers/engineers, regardless of product and how the product will be used by the customer. Based on feedback received from product testing, designs and ideas should continue to be iterated until the end result—something the user both wants and needs—is achieved. And this is where the true value of prototyping is found.

5. Prototyping Tools

So you’re convinced of the merits of prototyping. Now what? Where do you start? Before getting down to the actual business of prototyping, it’s important to understand the available tools so engineers can get started on the prototyping process.

For example, one available to can convert a 3D model into a array of layers in your chosen material’s thickness, allowing you to laser cut each layer of the greater whole and easily create a 3D object

6. How To Make A Product Prototype

When starting out, early prototypes should be “low fidelity” and gradually become “high fidelity” as you iterate. Fidelity speaks to how true the prototype represents final product.

The lowest-fidelity prototype might be a paper drawing or rough paper model, which can then turn into something like a cardboard prototype. The key here is that the materials and manufacturing of the early, low-fidelity prototype are inexpensive and quick, keeping the cost down,

Once the low-fidelity model is accurate from a design standpoint and you’ve incorporated feedback from each iteration, then you can move to higher-quality materials with confidence in your design files.

High-fidelity prototypes more accurately represent the final look and feel of the product, which is critical so users can really experience what the product will feel like. The upside: You’ll get more value in terms of feedback from testing. The downside: Upgraded materials and functionality have higher costs..

7. When To Start Prototyping

A common piece of advice for prototyping is “prototype early, prototype often.” This is where the “rapid” in “rapid prototyping” comes from. Most literature on product prototyping advises to prototype your invention as early as possible. The idea here is to avoid being in a vacuum during the design process by incorporating the needs of the user into the overall design right from the start.

8. Cost Of Prototyping

At the end of the day, you want to sell a product that excels in the field, and making prototypes can prevent you from wasting time and money on the wrong thing. “By realising additional requirements and constraints early, as well as receiving user feedback early, you can make better complexity and time estimates. And this results in better cost and time estimates.

So what does it cost to get a prototype made? Don’t be surprised by the answer. It depends. Digital prototyping allows you to generate zero-cost prototypes for the first few iterations of prototype development.

The simple back and forth of making a digital design tested through renderings costs you nothing more than time. Once you understand how much different design ideas will cost both as prototypes and in a full scale production run, you can move on to the physical prototypes.

A great way to keep cost down on physical prototype manufacturing is to start with low-fidelity prototypes to really nail down the design with affordable materials and mitigate the risk of producing an expensive but sub-optimally designed product, and it’s better for the work space by keeping failed products out of the trash.

As you iterate through low-fidelity prototypes, you’ll eventually get to a stage where higher-fidelity products are warranted. And here’s where costs can really vary. Depending on the custom parts and electronics required, this fully functioning the prototype could be very costly.

So if pays to review the types of prototypes and risk identification at each stage so that you can better determine what your prototype costs may be.

9. Best Practices For Making A Product Prototype

What you prototype and what you need to look for during testing will depend on what you are developing and what you hope to learn. One option is Instead of approaching prototyping like a designer soliciting feedback, approach it like a scientist testing cause and effect. Before you put pen to paper and design a prototype, write down exactly what you want to test.

When iterating prototypes, you will execute many variations on a single design theme. Prototypes should be low investment, i.e. inexpensive in materials and low in personal attachment.

If you are too attached to a prototype because you love the idea or because you spent a lot of money on it, you may not only be less willing to hear the honest feedback from users but also make the necessary changes.

A good prototype is a representation of what the product will be, not an actual example of the product itself. “Sure, you could take a longer time to build a more perfect prototype but doing so would only slow down the learning process.

So you want to make prototypes just robust enough to convey the idea to the user, but basic enough to maintain low investment. Additionally, prototypes should go just as far as projecting virtual constructs of the real product so that users can interact with them in real-time and offer valuable feedback.

The whole point of prototyping is to iterate the design over and over again until you have a successful, user-friendly product. Prototyping is nothing without iteration, so make sure you can not only easily iterate and adjust your prototype based on the feedback but also quickly produce the next prototype to continue the process,.

10. The Many Benefits Of Rapid Prototyping

There are many clear cut benefits of rapid prototyping. One of the most important? It frees up your creative potential. Having the ability to try out many different solutions, materials and tools, you are allowed to explore without pressure or commitment.

When you set out to make a great product there is pressure on you to make something great usually resulting in creative block and builds up stress, ultimately making it much more difficult to be bold with designs.

The truth is, most great products are the result of iteration. So your best bet in making something awesome is to get busy prototyping. Additionally, rapid prototyping also mitigates risk by allowing you to see the product from multiple perspectives.

Prototyping helps build a product that is agreeable to you and your customer. User feedback informs whether or not this product will be successful in the real world by testing the viability of your idea over and over again, so you can confidently bring your idea to market.

Ultimately, prototyping takes out all guess work from the design process. It minimises cost and increases profit. While it may seem like extra hours and money upfront, prototyping will save you big time in the long run by not only avoiding large production runs with the wrong design but also by ensuring the viability of your product to the user.

The bottom line: Prototyping sets you up for success.

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Top 10 Future Digital Twin Plans for Fleet Maintenance Unit Structure List Appropriated Tasks

7/10/2019

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Digital Twin is one of the most fundamental things we’ve done recently. A destroyer is one of our most complex weapon systems. We have now been able to virtualise that in a small package.

So if you think forward, now you could have your certified combat system on the ship, through operational test, ready to go fight. You could have your next system in test on the ship, being tested as you're operating in the fleet. You could have your third system with a bunch of algorithms doing AI kind of things, all on one single ship, and that can fundamentally change how we approach things.

We took a virtualised complete combat system on an old destroyer, hooked it to the sensors, shot a missile and hit a target. And so, we think this is going to be a pathway not only to really revolutionize how fast we can modernise our current systems, but then keep up with things.

“If you can’t solve a problem, make the problem harder.” If we made the problem so hard that we got only a week to update systems, not a year, then I think it will drive us to some of these new concepts.

Navy thinks this Digital Twin effort could help it get to a unified combat system more quickly. Some of the pushback on that effort is that if there is a vulnerability on one ship, a unified combat system means there is a problem on every ship? How do you make sure you are keeping ahead of that threat?

It’s something we've got to address, stem-to-stern, through the enterprise, and really bring security back as one of our fundamental things we think about when we put acquisition strategies together.

Having said that, getting the digital twin being able to upload 24 hours from compiling the combat, all give you a lot more resiliency, because you can update your systems faster as you find vulnerabilities, you can deal with them faster.

If you can have three versions of the combat system on the ship, and one gets corrupted, we can immediately deal with that. So, it’s actually a means of resiliency, not as a vulnerability. We’ve got to think our way through it.

The other thing we're seeing digital twin on more than just combat systems, we're now building digital twins of our shipyards. So how do we improve the efficiency of how we repair ships? And looking at, “Okay, let's look at the whole shipyard. Let's model it, let's simulate it, let's figure out where there's efficiencies.” So you're going to see that continue to kind of cross all the different domains in the Navy.

Consider an aircraft mission space where a critical spindle is about to snap. Without a Digital Twin Builder, the whirring machine will give no warning of its impending malfunction, and its failure will come at a random moment.

Diagnosis and repair will be relatively slow, constrained by data collection and the organising of human and material resources. For a fast-moving military mission, the lag can be costly. Because of the high value, we're talking about a lot of money for every hour of down time.

Problems can be mitigated with a Digital Twin Builder enables machines to have sensors so that the spindle in the machine is continually monitored and its performance data sent to a control room where the data is fed into a computer that acts as a digital twin of the machine – a virtual copy that accurately reflects the machine's current operating status based on real-time sensor data and physics modeling.

The Digital Twin, detecting a slight wobble in the spindle, might adjust its physical counterpart's operating parameters to correct for the wobble. Or, if the wobble can't be corrected for, it might warn of an impending malfunction.

In the control room an operator would then be tipped off, and set off a standardised response. "The Digital Twin creates maintenance work order, determine whether you could reroute production so that delivery is not impacted, find the appropriate maintenance personnel, and tell them where to go.

Maintenance personnel could quickly repair or replace the faulty machine, guided, either by a tablet showing a customised data feed on the impacted machine, or by a set of augmented reality glasses. Digital Twin technologies like this enables workers to minimise down time while improving performance.

"If some maintenance or repair task is beyond the skill set of a worker, using our tools, someone with the requisite skills somewhere else could see exactly what the worker standing at the machine sees and guide them on what to do.

Digital Twin robots have been designed to physically assist a human operator with tasks such as moving hot or heavy objects. At the moment, information flows only from the physical robot to its digital copy, but Digital Twins will eventually be bi-directional, so the digital version can adjust the operation of its physical twin in real time, instantly reacting to the information it receives.

Typically, by the time a customer delivers feedback about product quality problems, it can be difficult to diagnose what might have caused the problem so we can go back to a particular day, look at all the dashboards, drill down, diagnose and solve the problem."

"The goal is to assist workers by aggregating and crunching data, then creating insights from it. The control room will provide information and predictions, but the human has to make the decision."

But eventually, AI will take on a greater share of the decision-making burden. "As the systems become more intelligent, we can move to full automation by AI. That can relieve humans to focus on things that AI can't do: relationships, supply chain or customer issues, and managing workers."

So data will flow not just inside individual smart factories, but also between them. "Machines will be able to talk to machines directly, including machines located outside the factory. Networked machines will work together to predict failures, and to respond to them. For example, "the machine in your factory could tell a machine in an offsite factory shut down, we don't need the part you're making.
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Many organisations are sometimes reluctant to test the technology on their own because they didn't want to disrupt their own facilities. It's often difficult to bring together experts in manufacturing with the wide range of analytical scientists that could provide useful input.

Digital Twin Builders provides industry with the freedom to experiment and build, then to take back new technologies and best practices to field level missions.

"The merging of physical and digital worlds disruptively affects the way in which products are manufactured, placed on the market and operated. By utilising the insights produced by digital twins, users will be well positioned to exploit the breakthrough this technology brings.

New solutions can not only simulate products and facilities during the product development phases, but also in manufacturing and—more importantly even when the products or facilities are in the hands of end-users.

As an example, by simulating the operation of a field formation, based on digital twin solutions, operators can test which flows in the most complex structure are most efficient to run under specific conditions. Through this type of simulation, it is possible to iterate and select a line of operational benefits.

Simulations use the enormous amounts of data generated by sensors in the assets, and let agents gain valuable insights that can improve a process and provide a basis for improving future similar processes.

It’s now possible to develop hybrid models that leverage machine learning with multi-physical simulation models to accurately predict why a process in a facility may fail after it has been implemented.

New technology covers a product or plant's digital twin to simulate behavior in different environments and stresses, the system is intended to predict problems before they occur. The prediction is based on information from physical sensors and physics-based analysis based on simulation models to provide results in 3D visualisation.

"The synthesis of the digital and physical asset will enable companies to capture value throughout their product lifecycle. “This solution helps equipment operators and service providers predict and improve asset performance and reliability with technical insights. A digital twin that merges technical models, manufacturing details and operational insights is unique in the industry.”

Enabler technologies like AI, big data and predictions have found their way into the real-world mission space and manufacturing domains. Existing Operational/Info Tech systems are not designed to cope with the masses of data generated by fully connected shop-floor applications.

High-performance computing is transformative, centered on the idea of high volume and volatile streams of data and massive compute power to perform analytics, and AI applications on top of the data, while existing systems are locally optimised technology.

Large industrial vendors have pushed the concept of the digital twin— a full integration of the physical with the virtual world. In essence, this means that all product design data is available at the time of production.

As an example, the full design data of a car body is compared in real-time with the as-is built data in a car body shop. In addition, production-relevant data is fed back into the design process, also reflected as closed-loop engineering. This frontloading of information will allow better decisions at a very early point of the product lifecycle and generate additional value.

With asset data available in real-time from production through data aggregation and AI predictive and prescriptive applications will generate insight to increase overall equipment efficiency and lift value from manufacturing assets in operation.

But what happens as soon as insight is generated and the status of the physical process needs to be changed to a better state? In manufacturing for discrete and process industries, the process is defined by fixed code routines and programmable parameters. It has its own world of control code languages and standards to define the behaviour of controllers, robot arms, sensors and actuators of all kinds.

Stable for decades, Control code resides on a controller and special tools, as well as highly skilled automation engineers, who define the behavior of a specific production system. Changing the state of an existing and running production system changes the programs and parameters required to physically access the automation equipment—operational equipment needs to be re-programmed, often on every single component locally.

To give a concrete example, let’s assume we can determine from field data, using applied machine learning that a behavior of a robotic handling process needs to be adapted. In the existing world, production needs to stop. A skilled engineer needs to physically re-teach or flash the robot controller. The new movement needs to be tested individually and in context of the adjacent production components. Finally, production can start again. This process can take minutes to hours depending on the complexity of the production system.

Current production systems are trimmed to high stability and low variability. For example, automotive production has a large number of product variants, but still has an inflexible production system. With a car model lifetime lasting several years, production managers have learned to live with this inflexibility and value stable processes. However, customer- and technology-invoked trends will increase the need of fully flexible industrial control systems.

First, the speed of innovation increases due to improved design systems and customer demand. Second, requirements for customisation increase steadily. Third, intelligent algorithms will produce a steady stream of proposals for process improvement.

If we assume that AI will fulfill its promises, the majority of manufacturers will be able to gain constant insight. Companies that are able to execute these insights faster will have a competitive advantage. Additionally, every new state of a production and supply chain system will be seen as a new experiment and fed back into AI systems, ultimately generating a cycle of a self-improving system.

All control code has a digital twin in the virtual world. The local instance is constantly updated from the virtual master code. A virtual model of the whole production system provides context for control code—these manufacturing planning systems are already heavily used by e.g. line builders for automotive providers.

Having a full digital twin of a production system, including control code, insights can immediately be pushed down to change the state of a production system.

Still, human interaction will be required. Production systems will optimise themselves based on simulated and real experiment. Improvements will rapidly be propagated and labor will optimise the learning, not the system. This could also differ over time or by external influence.

With the release of edge platforms, the technology is here today to minimise the time from insight to reaction. The power of AI is and will be the core enabler to realise automation fast and at an affordable cost.

1. Field level maintenance is generally characterised by on-near system maintenance, often utilising line replaceable units & component replacement using tools and test equipment found in the field-level organisation not limited to simply "remove and replace" actions but also allows for repair of components or end items on-near system.

2. Field-level maintenance includes adjustment, alignment, service, applying approved field-level work orders, fault/failure diagnoses, battle damage assessment, repair, and recovery to always repair and return to the user include maintenance actions able to be performed by operators.

3. Crew maintenance is responsibility of using organisation formally trained operators/crews from proponent on specific system to perform maintenance on its assigned equipment, tasks consist of inspecting, servicing, lubricating, adjusting, replacing minor components and assemblies as authorised by allocation chart using basic issue items and onboard spares.

4. Operator/maintainer system specialists for example, signal, military intelligence, or a manoeuvre unit receive functional individulised training from proponent on diagnosing/troubleshoot problems focus on system performance/ integrity identify, isolate and trace problems to on-board spares deficits correct crew training deficiencies.

5. Maintainer work orders accomplished on a component, accessory, assembly, subassembly, plugin unit, or other portion either on system or after it is removed by trained maintainer remove and replace authority indicates complete repair is possible return items to user after work order performed at this level.

6. Sustainment-level maintenance generally characterised by “off system” component repair or end item repair and return to the supply system, or by exception, back to the owning unit performed by activity function to be employed at any point in integrated logistics chain.

7. Sustainment level intent to perform commodity-oriented repairs on all supported items return to standard providing consistent/measure level of reliability execute maintenance actions support force and supply system not able to be performed at field-level maintenance unit.

8. Exceptions made to when in-house sustainment level maintenance activities may conduct maintenance and return items to using unit but also may be performed by contract agreement comprised of below depot sustainment.

9. Below depot sustainment level maintenance assign to component, accessory, assembly, subassembly, plug-in unit, or other portion generally after it is removed from system. The remove and replace authority indicates complete repair is possible at below depot level return items to supply system also applies to end item repair and return to the supply system.

10. Depot level maintenance accomplished on end items or component, accessory, assembly, subassembly, plug-in unit, either on the system or after it is removed define remove and replace authority indicates complete repair is possible at depot level return items to supply system, or by exception directly to using unit after maintenance is performed

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Top 10 Operations/Maintenance Predictive Data Analytics Initiatives Improve Crew Deploy Proficiency

7/10/2019

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Maintenance based on schedules and timetables is being replaced with a new approach aimed at getting out in front of maintenance, looking at available sensors to predict where there is going to be failure, and eliminating that before it comes to a head. Better mechanisms to streamline parts supply from industry partners will go a long way in achieving Readiness of the Force.

Extending the lifespans of existing ships using data-driven maintenance efforts is the best strategy for growing the size of the Navy. The key to maintaining ships and enabling the Navy to extend their lifespans is data analytics.

“We have ships with a number of sensors on them, measuring things like reduction gears, shafting components, turbines, generators, water jets, air conditioning plants, high packs, a number of components, and we’re actually pulling data off those ships, in data acquisition systems.

Navy is analyzing data gleaned from smaller ship component operations is being used to determine how often such components need servicing, oil changes, filter changes, other maintenance actions and replacement. The process is called condition-based maintenance CBM and it is poised to drive improvements in maintaining ships.

“That’s one of the things we’re doing to get after utilising the technology we have today to operate the ships we have today more efficiently and more effectively.

During previous attempts at incorporating CBM, there was the concern that if major efforts like refurbishing tanks were only done when needed, rather than on a predetermined timetable, the Navy could avoid spending time and money on work ahead of need.

However, that also meant that shipyards wouldn’t have a clear work package before a ship showed up at the pier, adding uncertainty and, ultimately, more time and cost into the maintenance availability.

This time around, Navy is looking at condition-based maintenance as a way to address smaller maintenance items in such a way that data analysis points a ship crew to components that are experiencing minor performance issues or otherwise showing signs they are about to fail before the failure actually occurs.

A pilot program using enterprise remote monitoring will occur on an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Data collected will be sent for analysis, and operators will learn how to use the data to understand how their systems are performing and if maintenance or repairs are needed.

Navy wants to have a system of apps used to collect data from ship components, analyze the data, share it with operators and schedule work. The systems that will be monitoring, for example the turbine; it will tell the operators when a work procedure has to be performed and it will also then tap into the work package side of the house and generate a work package that gets sent to the ship, to the work center, to do the work. And if there’s a part involved, it will be able to pull a part from the supply system.”

Testing is occurring now, but there are some obstacles the Navy has to overcome before large-scale deployment. The Navy is struggling with how to transmit data securely. “The performance of any given asset is something we want to hold close.

So what you have to do is architect this from kind of the get-go with that kind of security. “You can harvest that data and you could potentially discover vulnerabilities, so you have to protect that. That’s We’re bringing that security aspect into the program.”

The Navy doesn’t have enough forces to go everywhere we need to go, and we have a pretty fragile mix of ships, so that when we miss an availability coming out on time, or we don’t build something to the schedule they’re supposed to build to, there are real-world consequences to that.”

The true determining factor of whether a ship’s lifespan can be extended is flexibility of the platform. The Arleigh Burke-class is the Navy’s workhorse today because, during the past 30 years, the Navy has successfully updated its operating systems.

Moving forward, extending the life of the ships in this class means back-fitting many of the older Flight I and Flight II with a scaled-back version of the AN/SPY-6[V] Air and Missile Defense Radar [AMDR] to keep these ships relevant to current and future mission needs.

“If you’re willing to do the maintenance on the ships, from a hull and mechanical perspective, you absolutely can keep them longer. The issue is really not can you keep them 50 years; the issue is can they maintain combat relevance. If they can maintain combat relevance, we know we can keep them longer.”

We have big concerns about declining ability of crews to take care of their own Ships. Maintenance Crews today have fewer opportunities to become proficient at ship maintenance during shore duties, meaning crews going to sea bring with them less knowledge about how the ship and its systems work.

While a complex challenge to address, part of the solution would be ensuring that crews can begin pre-deployment training on time – without delays from ship maintenance availabilities going long – and ensuring that that training time includes an emphasis on maintaining and repairing the ship.

Years of constrained funding that have taken risk on things like tech manuals for Engineering Operational Sequencing System, Planned Maintenance System and resourcing maintenance, to where what has been the risk-taker has been compressing that training timeline.

Biggest takeaway from training period is the importance of being flexible and "adapt as-you-go" while prioritizing the task at hand. "Really, you have to have an ability to ask yourself … 'What are my priorities? What do I need to be doing at this moment with my hands?' You kind of have to figure out based on what's going on around you, what you should be focusing on.

“It’s clear what the operational fleet’s demand is for us, which is to make sure the ship can be maintained, and the sailors where possible can do that. So we are focused on training for the sailors, making sure they had the equipment, the spare parts, the technical documentation and more to help the ship’s crews conduct more work themselves.

Crews found all kinds of things to 3D print – wrenches, assembly parts, protective covers to shield expensive equipment from repeated impact, and even a cover for a laser device that was on back order for several months and was instead printed in a single day.

“If you have a cable assembly for your utilities, you can only order the entire assembly – but if you don’t need the entire assembly, you just need one little component, you could print that one component for a few dollars rather than have to order the entire assembly which may cost several thousand dollars spending on what the item is.

There is still an ongoing conversation on the division of labor between sailors on the ships’ crews and the Regional Maintenance Centers, along with the role of contractors.

In a contested operating environment with denied communications, you are not going to have the ability to phone home.”

We have a certain amount of maintenance that’s in hands of the crew, we have a certain amount of maintenance that’s in contractor hands, and over the life of the program we’d like to get more of that into sailor hands and less of it in contract hands. “That not only decreases cost but it increases ownership.”

“The key is to increase sailor ownership and decrease the reliance on contractors and original equipment manufacturers. Manning requirements do not support shifting the entire maintenance workload to the crew, as their capacity is limited. But we are committed to maximising the amount of planned maintenance that we perform by the crew.

Navy is trying to boost its crews ability to perform more maintenance work on the ship without outside assistance. While this wouldn’t make much of a dent in the looming surge in workload, it could cut down on contractor maintenance costs, and it would lead to a more self-sufficient fleet capable of operating in complex environments.

“From talking to crews, one of the frustrating things for them was, it was just kind of the way we set it up, but contractors would come aboard and do the work but the crews would have to hang all the tags … so it was kind of like, rather than having the crew do the work, we would just have the sailors do all the setup and teardown, and then the contractors would step in and do the work and the sailors would watch them do the work. It’s crazy. There’s some maintenance items that are appropriately done by the depot – reset and safety … some smaller day-to-day tasks we just had to get after that.”

It would be nice to get all the open and inspects done before the avail and put the results in the solicitation for you to do the work,” so the work package is accurate and the tank work doesn’t show up as “new work” later on, which impacts cost and schedule.

“By not getting it in the solicitation, it guarantees that you’re going to have growth and new work in the availability. You’ve got it scoped in to the solicitation to do the open and inspect, but not the results of it. What we do there is we have industry provide us hours on what they think may be needed. So it’s one of the additional parts or final parts of the avail that’s not defined.

“The Navy can go do the open and inspect work. We do multiple assist visits to the ships for areas that doesn’t include things like hot work, cutting something open to look, or something that would cause a system to come down, because the ship’s not in the avail.

“We’re conducting a very extensive conditions-based engineering reliability maintenance examination. The Navy, certainly the surface navy, in many cases by default, has done a very heavy reliance on time-based maintenance – so it’s monthly, time to change the oil, and we would do that. Well, that certainly is preventive, but is it the most cost-effective, most efficient and most effective way to do maintenance:”

“So we’re going to take a big swing at, are there ways we can certainly be more effective and efficient? When you have an optimally manned or minimally manned crew, you need to be effective with that time because you want to make sure you’re doing the right maintenance.

If you just say, time-based, you’ve got to do all this, you might have to make some risk decisions on which maintenance to do, but it might not be the right maintenance to do and the right maintenance to forego.

If you had sensors and systems and the ability to say this piece of equipment is more at risk – so do I go do the change oil on my port diesel engine or change the oil on my starboard diesel engine? If we had the metrics and assessment rigor that would say we might be getting ready to experience a casualty on your port engine, then we would wait to do the starboard and go do the port engine. So that’s sort of the thought process behind the conditions-based maintenance instead of the time-based maintenance.

Where you are constrained with man hours with a smaller crew, you sometimes have to make those decisions, so we’re taking a look at how we can use the assessment rigor to help drive us into making the right maintenance decisions. And then what that may allow us to do as well is examine do we have the right crew complement, numbers and by ratings, designators, skillsets. Do we have the right total numbers, and do we have the right skillsets?”

Every launch. a slew of maintenance checks have to be conducted. “All of those checks that are in the regular routine operations of the ship are what the ship crew does naturally when they’re out to sea, which is why we end up with so many man hours a year”

“It was really about the monthly level and below checks are kind of within the capacity and the capabilities of the crew. And then those checks that went beyond the monthly scope usually were more intrusive and demanded more man hours – not always the case, but typically – and those were, in many cases, planned for those to be contractor-executed checks, because if you were doing them quarterly you could probably schedule them in conjunction with periods of time when the ship would be in port.”

As the fleet operates the ships more, crews will find more efficient ways to schedule maintenance work, trimming down on the number of hours required to do maintenance. The way to make a real dent in total maintenance, though, would be to fully implement the conditions-based maintenance model.

One ship was equipped with thousands sensors that send data off the ship on the status of various shipboard systems. Using that data to make decisions about when to perform maintenance – rather than just doing a daily, weekly or monthly check because a manual says so – would be the most efficient use of the small crew’s time

It's long days, it's busy days … it's not an easy job. "But it's rewarding. Its an organization where crew members have the ability to impact operations at a strategic level. And that's a pretty amazing thing."

1. “You can do more than anyone to justify our goals if we can get this right”

2. "We are transforming our capabilities and utilising everything available to achieve the mission.”

3. "It is about prioritising what we are going to do, it's about focusing on the long game.”

4. “I’m pleased with the changes we’re implementing. As long as we are working together, we are in the right place.”

5. “We need to understand requirements and what's our end state and know exactly where we are at.”.

6. “These sessions validate my understanding of intent and how you're responding to my intent.”

7. "I have not seen a commander march down the field like you have over the last three years.”

8. "What I think about every day is are we enabling team activities, and are we capable of sustaining our relationship? We have to ensure the right tools are available for training.”

9. "We have a tough mission and optempo is not getting lower, it's getting higher. We need to use our resources smartly.”

10. "This was a very good rundown. You are clearly aligned with my intent. I am grateful for what you do every day. Thanks for doing it.”

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Top 10 Action Reports Develop Schedule Plans to Accelerate Readiness Delivery Fix Availability Structure

7/10/2019

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Navy must find ways to get ships and capabilities out to the fleet faster. There are issues, such as the Ford-class aircraft carrier that continues to climb in cost, and fixing a servicewide maintenance mess caused by years of cuts and overtasking of a shrinking fleet.

Navy is focused on. first and foremost, delivery. We have got to get capability into the fleet, whether that’s new capability, new construction or sustaining the capability we have. So the big measure of success is through the fleet size. Reorganising our value proposition along that line is an important piece.

Second piece is focusing on agility. The world is changing faster and faster, threats are changing, we’re in a world competition. And so if we can’t change faster, we are not going to be relevant.

Third piece has been focusing on getting some fundamental costs out. And as we try and grow the fleet, they won’t do as much good if we can’t afford to build and operate that fleet. We want to take fundamental costs out of the system.

Congress has been vocal about the need to control the costs of the first-in-class ships. We’ve got Columbia coming up, as well as FFG(X), large surface combatant and a fleet of unmanned ships. How will Navy get their arms around that?

That’s certainly a fundamental thing to watch. First-in-class ships are tough. It comes down to a couple of different things. One is having a robust dialogue as we are building requirements with both industry and our technical experts, and moving away from transactional requirements. The frigate is an example where we’ve had a much more interactive dialogue. We've actually changed requirements based on cost and time, and so, that’s an important element. We’re doing a lot more of that.

We’re also looking hard at the contract vehicles. The contract strategy of the future is probably not one contract of one type to one supplier, but a number of contracts. A prime contractor build, a price challenge to look at new technology, a Digital Twin to evaluate it — all of those things will play into allowing us to get more credibility in our delivery programs out of the gate.

Industry seems excited about predictive analytics in the maintenance world: knowing what’s going to break before it breaks. Is there potential for significant cost savings? That’s where the commercial world’s gone. We have the data. We haven’t integrated the data and the analytics into our processes the way we need to.

In the future we will essentially have a Digital Twin of the ship in terms of how all the systems are working, what needs maintenance, what doesn’t and how are they operating, to better condition our maintenance planning.

The biggest thing we need to improve in our maintenance work is planning, and so that when we open up a ship, we have a better idea of what needs to be done. And then a little less focus on cost and more focus on schedule, because what the fleet really is sensitive to is ships coming in on time and ships coming out on time.

Sometimes we get a little too fixated on cost, and we incur a lot of cost because we control cost by having schedule move-out, and that just ripples its way all the way through the system.

We need to set the standards for shipbuilders in the ship repair world, and then let them go so that we are not unnecessarily holding up maintenance activities as they’re ongoing. That’s what we need to deliver for the fleet.
The private shipyards that do maintenance often complain the Navy is too unpredictable. How can the Navy regain the trust of industry?

Lack of either planning or adhering to plan has been one of the core issues. This is the first year we’ve ever produced a 30-year ship maintenance plan. Now, it’s not specific for every ship at every time, but it shows the amount of work we’ve got to do and how we’ve got to build so that industry can make smart investments seeing that.

Then what we’re trying to do for the ships returning from deployment is we’re moving away from executing a contract 30 days before we needed to start the maintenance. So now we’re back to a six-month goal, so we have a plan.

We’re never going to be able to control every variable. It’s not a commercial effort where you own every route and you can control every variable to hyper-optimise. We don’t want to hyper-optimise because then you lose some resiliency. But we’re trying to find that sweet space of enough predictability so that we can be efficient.

The other thing we’re doing is setting some controls. In new construction, we have a very disciplined way to add work in. We didn’t have quite that level of discipline in repair, and so we tended to add work in late in the game.

We’re adding some discipline into that, so if we advance plan a little bit sooner and add some more discipline, then we can make a better decision on the exact impact. Because while it may not seem that large for that individual ship, it could have a huge ripple effect, and we need to be cognizant of that when we make those decisions.

Navy has been especially challenged on the submarine maintenance front, particularly with the attack boats. Is there some light at the end of the tunnel? We have accelerated by about a year hiring all the DoD folks in the shipyard to get to full strength. So the good news is we’ve got the workforce. The challenges are that they’re fairly green.

There has been some great work, at some locations but all the shipyards are getting that experience to level up. That will give us the depth going forward in a couple of years to take care of our fleet as we build back up to a 66-submarine fleet.

To help some of the surge, we’ve been sending some to the private yard. And that’s another area we’ve got to get a skilled base of repair specialists. We’re challenged a little bit on the front end, We will work our way through that.

Then there is rebuilding the shipyards for the future. Navy has about a $21 billion investment over the next 20 years. That will allow us, as the workforce matures, to then gain efficiency, about 20 to 30 percent, which will then allow us to take that increased load once we come out of the dip in submarine numbers.

Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program is on deck as the Navy‘s #1 priority. There supplier issues. Does the Navy have a plan to stabilize the supplier base?

We have a submarine industrial base — both DoD, supplier, and at 2 private shipyards— that has done tremendous things rebuilding itself from a decade of hiatus in the ’90s. We’ve gotten up to two Virginias per year and done a very good job with that.

Submarines are very sensitive to cadence and sequence, and so the arc will be, as we add in Columbia and some of the other mods we want to do to Virginia, not to mess up that cadence and sequencing. That would cause massive disruptions.

So we supremely focused on Columbia, making sure that design is solid. The biggest threat to Columbia is Virginia, and so if we don’t keep Virginia on track, then that can cause disruption to Columbia.

The biggest threat to Virginia is the supplier base not being able to keep up. We have an integrated enterprise that looks at all the suppliers for all of our nuclear construction — in total it is over 300 suppliers — and making sure they are up to the task. And then, where we see challenges either getting it right or having kind of single source, proactively addressing those challenges.

Congress has been a great help with us. They provided funding to go after those, and so we will continue to manage that, but it’s a big enterprise, and we have got to keep focused on it.

Years ago, we were told that the solution to the Navy's maintenance problems was the unpredictability of fleet schedules, and that putting stability back in the schedule would create more predictable maintenance schedules.

Removing the fluctuations and long deployments would make creating the work packages more effective, would make contracting in time easier and would help the private and public yards plan. This would drive down costs and increase operational availability.

Yes, the Optimized Fleet Response Plan was going to fix matters. Let’s trace the arc of the past five or six years of talking points to see how Big Navy has performed over five years and three Fleet Forces commanders since OFRP was rolled out.

"Our challenge right now is that we don't have any flexibility with our money, so the only thing that we can really do is go after it in the operating accounts. So for now, that money will need to come from a yet-to-be-identified "somewhere else.

"You can look at taking out some force structure and taking better care of the remainder of the fleet -- that was our intent with the seven cruisers and the two LSD dock landing ships. "That didn't go over too well.”

Well they didn't cash in ships for maintenance because leaders didn’t want to trade force structure. They often expressed, that if the Navy's missions were not going to go away, and they were just extending deployments for fewer and fewer ships, the only way to break the cycle was to grow the Navy.

Throughout the last six years since the talking points have ranged from optimistic predictions of a turn-around to repetitive promises of more predictable work schedules driving down work spans and costs.

What is the Optimized Fleet Response Plan and What Will It Accomplish? O-FRP is a full realignment of the Fleet’s maintenance, training and deployment cycles to fit in a standard 36-month rotation.

O-FRP has been developed to enhance the stability and predictability for our Sailors by aligning carrier strike group assets to a new 36-month training and deployment cycle. Beginning in fiscal year ’15, all required maintenance, training, evaluations and a single eight-month deployment will be efficiently scheduled throughout the cycle to drive down costs and increase overall fleet readiness.

Then the Navy started trying to create spreadsheets that would show the yards the expected workloads so they could plan better.

The Navy’s maintenance and operational communities have completed the first iterations of a surface ship master plan for maintenance and modernization work, in the hopes of balancing out peaks and valleys in shipyard workload without impacting operational needs.

Surface ship lifecycle maintenance organisation, began an availability duration analysis to understand the relationship between the work scope and how much time the yard would need. That data then fed into the workload forecasting effort at the regional maintenance centers .

Separate sand charts were created for each Regional Maintenance Center RMC, showing the workload expected for several years to come – up to 2023 in the most recent iteration. The charts show expected work, color-coded by ship class, and make clear where the peaks and valleys are.

Data is then taken to a Surface Ship Master Plan negotiation with the type commander and fleet commanders and discuss options that will help stabilize the shipyard workforce without disrupting operational needs.

By 2016, leaders were touting the inherent flexibility of OFRP to allow overruns in the yards. “As stakeholders continue to adjust the Master OFRP Production Plan, no single community in the Navy will be able to focus on optimising their own processes, but rather they will all have to work together to optimise force generation at a macro level.”

For example, the ideal situation for the maintenance community would be to have a steady flow of ships come through public and private yards for maintenance and modernisation. However, under OFRP all the ships of a carrier strike group must be through maintenance and basic training and ready to start integrated training by an exact date.

These opposing needs are being worked out in the OFRP Cross-Functional Team and have already led to some gives and takes: the ships may need to split up and go to different yards to avoid overloading a single shipyard. A ship that requires a longer maintenance period may need to cut into basic training and compress that schedule, while still being ready to start integrated training on schedule.

Leaders said this shows the flexibility of OFRP, and it also highlights the importance of cross-community collaboration: if the maintainers know in advance that a ship needs major repair work during its availability or will be stuck in dock longer to accommodate a system modernisation effort, they can tell the training community well in advance and work together to find a mutually acceptable solution.

Let's fast forward to today. Where are we now, and what is the Navy saying? If we started in 2013 with a $2 billion backlog, we rolled out OFRP in 2014, by 2016 we'd had it all mapped out and were giving the shipyards predictability, what's going on here in 2019?

If the Navy ever hopes to reach its goal of a 355-ship fleet, it won’t be by simply building new hulls and launching them. Instead, the admirals have long recognised they’ll have to extend the lives of dozens of ships already long in the tooth — and do so at a time when shipyard space is already stretched and less than half of its ships are able to complete scheduled maintenance on time.

“We’ve really got to get better than what we’re doing today. We’re digging out of a little bit of a maintenance backlog.” They insisted Navy was getting better at getting ships in and out of maintenance availabilities, but currently only about 30 percent of destroyers are able to leave the docks on time.

So the private yards need to build capacity if they are going to be able to dig out of the hole. Sure enough, predictability is still the watch word, but we've thrown in a new buzzy term: Dynamic Force Employment, which is all about being upredictable.

Shipyards and companies in the private sector hire workers for specific projects, but the Navy usually issues a contract just a few months before a ship pulls in for work on a one-off contract, it doesn’t provide the shipyards an incentive to think long-term.

“Industry has got to hire more. We got to build a system that incentivises industry to have the right people there, so I think you’re going to see a real sea change in the way we’re working to acquire repair work that will give industry a longer view of the maintenance schedule.

Won’t the Dynamic Force Employment concept, which will see ships leave port, only to return early from a deployment, and then head out again at an unpredictable time cause havoc in the push for more predictability leaders had been talking about?

“Operations come first. “There are ways we can incorporate the thought process of dynamic force employment and still give industry enough predictability. But the model of predictable unpredictability may be tough to square with the push on the back end for more predictability.

“It’s something that the maintenance community is going to have to wrestle with. We’re going to have to think our way carefully though this.”

Now we have the new "Long-Range Plan for the Maintenance and Modernization of Naval Vessels." Now it's unclear what the difference is between NAVSEA's 2014/2015 master plan for ship maintenance and modernization and today's 30-year ship maintenance plan except an extra 20 years of projections. It's also unclear if NAVSEA is still using their 2014 master plan. But the branding is a very similar.

"This plan complements the 30-year Shipbuilding Plan and Shipyard Optimization Plan and establishes the framework to effectively sustain our investments in today’s fleet. It highlights the requisite development initiatives that will facilitate a more adaptable and reliable industrial base, while providing a foundation to support the workload forecasts of our industry partners.”

"Tools like this are critical to the success of the Navy and will help us build a culture of continuous evaluation of the industrial base capacity and capability; enabling us to meet the requirements of well-laid plans and adapt to any surge demand if the situation arose."

The new strategy is to get more predictability into the system by grouping maintenance availability contracts together in block buys.

"We did a re-look at our acquisition strategy. We had kind of gone into a 'compete every availability just in time' strategy, and while that was ok on an individual basis it didn't allow us to look at it as a system and didn't afford industry the opportunity to improve productivity and efficiency.

“So we are looking at grouping availabilities together either geographically or by type of work, which would then incentivise investment and productivity improvements. Our on-time rate is improving out of both the public and the private yards"

The 30-year ship maintenance plan is promoted as being critical to getting private shipyards to invest in workers and infrastructure to meet the Navy's needs.

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

Navy needs to move away from awarding work packages such a short time prior to the start of work. Navy needs to award the Surface Force work packages much earlier and not wait until such a short timeprior to the start of the maintenance availability to award the work package. Both the private shipyards and Navy need time to plan the work.

Why hasn't OFRP and the promised stability produced the improved maintenance availability performance that it aimed for since it appears the surface fleet is working through the same backlog it had six years ago?

What happened to NAVSEA's 2014/15 master plan and why did it not produce the results it intended?

What is different about the 30-year ship maintenance plan the Navy is now touting?

Is it reasonable to expect that private yards will invest in workers and infrastructure based on the latest maintenance plan for a fleet that has routinely under-performed and under-delivered on previous plans? The Navy is still putting depot maintenance items on its "unfunded priorities" list, so what message is that sending to industry?

If we are straining our maintenance industrial base beyond its capacity how are we supposed to hit the 355 plan?
How do you square "Dynamic Force Employment" and the operational drive for "unpredictability" with the need to get your ships in and out

1. Exhaust all available means of resolution prior to submitting an Action Report

2. Inform expeditor or aircraft crew chief of Action Report requirement

3. Ensure detail is added to Action Report to alleviate interpretation issues

4. Include tail number of aircraft if Action Report is related to an aircraft

5. Ensure correct Action Report categorisation, severity and classification

6. Review all Action Report submissions to ensure correct priority has been assigned

7. Ensure all info/attachments provided on Action Report are technically accurate/complete

8. Ensure Action Report details provided by initiator explain problem completely

9. Approve Action Reports with record of submittal notification

10. Monitor Action status via customer relations management

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Top 10 Identify Characteristics Comprise Supply Network Measure Readiness Deploy Command Activities

7/1/2019

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To better prepare battalions for large scale combat operations, we’re working on sending more battalion commanders to combat training centers so they can be leaders in coordinating installation logistics for supporting power projection e.g. equipping Soldiers as they deploy.

Most installations have logistics readiness centers, which provide essential logistical support to local commands to prepare, enable and support to the warfighter.

"We are making changes include assimilating capabilities and utilising everything available to achieve the mission.

Brigade commanders remain the primary leaders for integrating unique capabilities offered through the life cycle management commands. This action has reengaged directors to identify and update their equipment and infrastructure requirements, enabling plans for future allocations
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"It is about prioritising what we are going to do, it's about focusing on the long game.”

Updates focused on Strategic Readiness, and specifically, munitions readiness. This focus endeavors to operationalise strategic support focus areas in multi-domain operations in order to deliver ready, reliable and lethal munitions readiness at all levels of war.

The campaign plan topics included munitions readiness; review of policies; non-destructive testing initiatives and requirements; and critical munitions; artificial intelligence integration; Logistics Management Program manufacturing integration and intelligence; transition to sustainment; and, supporting the force of the future.

"We have a tough mission and optempo is not getting lower, it's getting higher. We need to use resources smartly. We are using scorecards to measure various performance metrics and reviewing all contracts to make them output based.

"The question we ask is, 'What did you say you were going to do, and did you do it?'

We are instituting strategies to improve its supply performance of critical parts, in areas like reducing backorders and lowering procurement lead times.

"When this thing breaks down on the battlefield, is there going to be a part or not?" "If not, we're failing. At the end of the day, our real grade is going to be on the battlefield."

We are expanding its depot-forward operations to bring key support services closer to Soldiers to ensure troops working in remote locations understood they are part of its mission.

One of several topics we have covered is updating contract management procedures aimed at increasing contractor accountability. It’s important for the services to better understand the performance outputs of contracts as they relate to costs.

We must look deeper into the metrics associated with each contracted requirement. Are we achieving what we actually want to see? We’re not interested in buying "readiness for increased costs."

Our team has reduced the number of contracts managed through the command dramatically within the past year. Other improvements include new procedures designed to better understand the command's initial and ongoing needs for contracting agreements.

Other topics included a briefing on Reprogramming Teams to protect aircraft from up-to-the-minute threats by stabilizing and improving the fleet of critical communications systems.

It takes special tools to track all those aircraft and the related supply chains, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is now reaching out to industry for ideas on upgrading the military’s existing technology, which is managed through the Joint Logistics Enterprise. DARPA posted a solicitation for proposals for a program it’s calling LogX.

The logistics enterprise still uses legacy technology, according to the request. LogX is looking for research approaches “that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems,” the request states. Specifically, the program wants tools that can provide real-time logistics and supply chain situational awareness “at unprecedented scale and speed.”

The request goes on to describe the logistics enterprise as a triple-decker layer of networks. There is the physical supply chain, information networks that inform the physical mobilization of supplies and financial l networks. LogX will focus on improving the information network, according to the request.

Under the Multi-Domain Operations concept, Materiel Command has reorganized and reshaped to ensure readiness of the Strategic Support Area, where military might is generated, projected, and sustained during the fight. Joint Munitions Command and Material Command are preparing the joint force for large-scale combat across all war fighting domains.

Joint Munition Command's strategic support mission focuses on munitions readiness, but also supports several focus areas, which include: supply availability and equipment readiness; industrial base readiness; installation readiness; strategic power projection; and logistics information readiness.

Joint Munitions Command's mission is to provide the Joint Force with ready, reliable, and lethal munitions at the speed of war, sustaining global readiness. Munitions readiness is why JMC exists.

"JMC's strategic support begins with demand signals or ammunition requirements, which the enterprise uses to calibrate the logistics footprint needed to rapidly project power and sustain the fight .

The Total Munitions Requirement includes all munitions required to support current operations for training, testing, and combat. Realistic and accurate requirements are imperative to ensure supply availability, funding levels, sufficient manning, installation throughput capabilities, and industrial base preparedness.

"In preparation for the next worldwide contingency, the ammunition enterprise is focused closely on Combatant Command Operations Plan requirements and the ability of the logistics network to meet those requirements. Requirements, just like the stockpile, are a moving target. A deliberate and constant refresh of data, analysis, and collaboration is required. The newly established War Planning Division is synchronizing this effort for JMC to meet this goal.

"Efforts in Strategic Power Projection ensures our ability to rapidly deploy Joint forces forward," "JMC ensures munitions readiness by providing the ammo needed at the right place and right time during contingency operations."

The services have identified support gaps and friction points in strategic support. To prepare the operational environment, JMC is enhancing world wide munitions prepositioning along with update support plans, and decision support tools. The end goal is a distribution network prepared to execute precision logistics, with an agile production base postured to sustain the Joint Force and deliver lethality that wins

Marines work to claw back readiness and increase pilot flight hours, it's the spare parts issue that has the service's top aviator most concerned. Aircraft maintainers are still sometimes resorting to cannibalization, or borrowing parts from working aircraft to make other planes operational.

The one thing that is holding the man down on every platform is not-mission-capable supply," By every type/model/series, it's a contributor to why that airplane might not be available for flying. "We couldn't sustain them. The requirement was still there, but we couldn't sustain it. If the Marine Corps was a business, they are underwater right now, because we don't have enough power tools to make flight hour goal.

The biggest challenge squadrons of all type/model/series aircraft face is “not mission capable-supply,” where spare parts are not available and therefore the plane cannot be fixed and put back on the flight line. “If you don’t have the parts you need on the shelf, what does a good industrious sailor or Marine do?

They go get it off another airplane. That airplane’s a little more broken than that one over there, so I’m going to take it off that airplane and put it on that one. That’s several maintenance efforts, that’s very negative maintenance because I’m going to have to … go over, take a part off an airplane, install it on that airplane over there, and then eventually go back and put another part on the airplane I just took it off of. It’s crazy, but they’re doing it because they have to do it .

The Navy and Marine Corps have sought to address this problem by asking lawmakers for more money for spare parts and logistics.

Distributed Operations concept supplements traditional sea and land basing options with “mobile forward arming and refueling points” for resupply mid-mission. A separate mobile distribution site would serve as the location for Marines on surface connectors or host nation forces to stage fuel and weapons that will be brought to the mobile forward arming and refueling points. Importantly, all these sites are considered “mobile” and are intended to maintain elements of “deception and decoy” – in keeping with the idea that the aircraft are supposed to be distributed and difficult to find and target.

The biggest challenge is spare parts and maintenance, and paying close attention to that supply logistics chain to avoid the problems plaguing the rest of Marine aviation. As for the maintainers, he said there’s a lot of excitement today about the F-35 transition and “right now we have just an exceptionally well trained F-35 fleet of mechanics.

We are attacking our current unacceptable Not Mission Capable- Supply rate, and the root causes for it. The supply chain that supports Marine aviation is fragmented, antiquated, and not optimized to enable the required state of readiness in our current fleet. This fact is clearly evidenced by the low rate of Ready Basic Aircraft RBA and unsatisfactory high Non Mission Capable Supply NMCS rates across nearly every T/M/S the Marine Corps currently operates.

Each of the Independent Readiness Reviews conducted to date AV-8B, CH-53E, and V-22 identified systematic shortfalls in the sustainment organisations, processes, and resources of the supply chain that supports Marine Aviation. Accordingly, the focus of effort will be on continuing to aggressively attack these daunting challenges. The strategy to reduce the NMCS challenge will be focused on the areas of consumables, repairable, and manpower.”

Marines will work with the Defense Logistics Agency to improve the accuracy of bills of material and to “monitor fleet demand for consumables on long-term contracts and ensure vendors receive accurate demand forecasts,” and work with the Naval Supply Systems Command to improve depot component repair performance. Consumable forecasting is an issue. Lack of consumable material accounts for greater than 80% of non-mission capable supply.

Since the CH-53E is out of production, there can be delays in getting needed parts,. They are sometimes required to make certain parts in-house which can take a while.

The situation became dire when across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration hit.

The readiness center was not able to hire replacements for artisans who retired or took jobs elsewhere, and it could not order badly needed maintenance materials or spend money to fix equipment at the center. This meant no preventive maintenance on plant equipment. That led to many machines being down for extended periods of time," This inhibited our ability to produce parts, further slowing our turnaround time. Both issues continue to impact our throughput and cost.

“And instead of just kind of looking at something in the aggregate, you’re now responsible for that airplane, getting the parts for that airplane.” The service is also looking for inefficiencies in existing contracts that can be ironed out, as well as improvements to the flow of parts – to avoid scenarios where spare parts stack up at loading docks but don’t make it to aircraft maintainers in a timely fashion. Marine maintainers weren’t spending enough time each month actually touching their airplanes since the supply chain logistics system was in such dire shape.

1. Measurement System Allows Scoring Flexibility

“One size fits all” approach is prevalent at even some of the most well-recognised supply chain organisations. Better systems will allow adjustments to the performance categories and their weights to reflect the realities of different supply requirements. The best scorecards align directly with the outcomes sought from doing business with a particular supplier.

For example, an automotive original equipment manufacturer could change the way it evaluates suppliers by involving more employees in the process and giving them the power to adjust the weights used to evaluate suppliers.

Create internal “boards,” one for each of its product segments to determine weights of the various performance categories against which suppliers are evaluated. Each board consists of specialists in cost, technology, quality, and logistics who are responsible for posting supplier data regularly on a supplier portal. Suppliers are able to see the names and performance of their competitors, although the product boards have the authority to withhold names within their product groups if they so choose.

2. Internal Customers Evaluate Supplier Performance

In the information age, internal customers should be able to submit comments and ratings about a supplier's performance directly into a scorecard system. These individuals are usually in the best position to evaluate a supplier's operational performance. For example, when internal participants have looked at a supplier much of the performance score relates to something called “account management”, reflecting how well a supplier works with the company and responds to requests and concerns. Buyers actively solicit input from engineering, product management, marketing, sales, and product support before assigning a score, reflecting an extensive level of cross-functional input across the company.

A worthwhile exercise is to assemble an internal team to compare the current state of supplier measurement against an ideal future state. Any gaps that exist between the current and future states—and there could be many—will require a clear plan to bring an existing system closer to a preferred system.

Procurement teams should consider allowing suppliers to enter a Web-based portal to view any free-form comments or scores submitted by internal customers. This supports the efficient and open exchange of information, something that is widely practiced with other supply chain applications like sharing demand forecasts, for example. Most supply chain experts would agree that information-sharing across the supply chain is a good thing. So why should sharing of supplier performance data be any different?

3. Scorecards are Reviewed and Acknowledged by Suppliers' Top Managers

Key executives at each supplier should receive electronic copies of the scorecards. Most importantly, the party sending the scorecard should track acknowledgements that the scorecards were received and reviewed, along with any responses to specific queries.

Forwarding scorecards directly to executive managers supports at least two purposes. First, these executives will have access to information that their own personnel may not willingly share. More than one executive has been caught off guard because they were unaware of issues that affected customers. Second, Information will likely reach the individuals who can effect meaningful change when it is required. It makes a lot of sense to provide vital “feedback” information to those who are ultimately accountable for performance results.

4. Suppliers with More than One Location Receive Multiple Scorecards

There can be a tendency to count a supplier as a single entity, yet many suppliers provide material from multiple locations. To aggregate different locations into a single scorecard can be misleading. It also makes it harder to assign scores to specific locations.

A possible solution is to evaluate each supplier's shipping locations across a basic set of operational metrics such as cost, quality, and delivery while the supplier as a whole is evaluated by a set of higher-level metrics. Examples of such metrics include assessments of supplier innovation, responsiveness, and willingness to invest in the buyer-seller relationship. This approach keeps the unique locations grouped within the supplier's code, which helps when conducting any analyses.

5. Scorecards include Cost-Based Measures Whenever Possible

Most scorecards include price as a performance category simply because price is easy to measure. Unfortunately, price never reflects the total cost of doing business. To compensate for any disconnect between price and total cost, progressive supply chain organisations calculate metrics that reflect more than unit price.

An example of a total cost metric is the supplier performance index assumes any quality or performance infraction committed by a supplier increases the total cost of doing business with that supplier. If a supply chain manager can track these infractions and assign a cost to them, the calculated index can then be used in a scorecard to supplement a price metric. The performance index or even the adjusted price can be included in the scorecard rather than simply the price paid, although price can still be included as a scorecard metric.

6. Scorecards are Updated in Real Time

Too many scorecards still resemble a batch updating system that features periodic input of data submitted manually each month or each quarter. In a perfect world, anyone who is granted access to a scorecard system should be able to view supplier performance levels in real time. Whenever a transaction occurs, whether it involves the results of a quality audit at a receiving dock or an accounts payable transaction, data records should flow seamlessly into the scorecard database with real-time updating of supplier performance. Of all the attributes of an ideal measured system described in this article, this is the one that is rarely implemented.

For real-time updating to work, the scorecard system must be linked to other supply chain constituencies, including accounts payable, quality control, and transportation. Any system that stresses objective rather than subjective assessment, particularly in a real-time scenario should receive serious consideration. It's safe to conclude that most supply chain systems are moving toward real-time data visibility. Some purchasing organisations are beginning to rely on suppliers to self-report and submit their performance to the scorecard system on a frequent basis. A few leading companies are even beginning to solicit performance data from or about second-tier suppliers.

7. The Measurement System Separates the Critical Few from the Marginal Many

In some situations not all suppliers are being measured using scorecard systems. But should this really be a cause for concern? In an era when fewer suppliers are providing a greater share of total purchases, there has never been more need to separate the critical few from the marginal many. If a supply chain organisation is adamant about measuring most of its suppliers, then the less critical suppliers should receive a basic scorecard—perhaps even one that is categorical. At some point, depending on the level of effort required to obtain scorecard data, the cost to measure a supplier could outweigh the value of measuring that supplier. When this is the case, a logical response is to not measure, measure less frequently, or simplify the type of scorecard used.

8. The Metrics Database Allows User Flexibility in Retrieving and Displaying Data

An effective system will not only generate the scorecard itself; it will enable data to be presented in a variety of reporting formats, along with easy generation of useful reports. On-demand reports can show side-by-side supplier rankings, demonstrate performance changes by category, and highlight the suppliers that improved or deteriorated in performance over a certain period. A database that allows the slicing and dicing of raw data is an essential element of an ideal scorecard system.

9. The Measurement System Provides Early-warning Performance Alerts

Most measurement systems are reactive in that they report what has happened, not what is likely to happen. As with a statistical process control system, an ideal measurement system would be able to “look ahead” to spot troublesome trends and non-random changes in a supplier's performance before it becomes out of control. An ideal system would notify supply chain managers of potential problems before the impact of those problems is even realised. The system would have predictive capabilities.

Consider the possibility of generating early warnings when using advance shipping notices Any time a notice reveals a possible late delivery after comparing expected transit times against a due date, a material planner would receive a warning of the potential delay. Or consider real-time GPS tracking systems that could reveal that supply chain delays are occurring, with a notification sent to the appropriate personnel. It is almost always better to be proactive.

10. Suppliers Can View and Compare their Performance Online

For many years, almost every supply chain organisation refused to identify the scores and names of competing suppliers within a category or commodity group. Later, most organisations became more willing to show relative comparisons against competing suppliers The time has come to accept that scorecards present a good way to create healthy competition among suppliers. That means permitting and enabling them to access their scores online, complete with comparisons to other suppliers in the same or similar commodity groups.

Scorecard transparency is an idea whose time has come. It’s like looking at the standings of any sports league. Doesn't every team know precisely where it stands in relation to competing teams? We have built a good system into an excellent one.

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Top 10 Instructions Use of Autonomous Robots Streamline Supply Chain Logistics at Job Sites

7/1/2019

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Automation has allowed supply chain operations within companies to perform tasks with minimal human intervention or interaction. Automation methods vary significantly in size, functionality, dexterity, intelligence and cost, from robotic process automation to flying vehicles with artificial intelligence.

Traditionally, automation and robots have been deployed for executing routine and repetitive tasks, requiring complex programming for implementation, while lacking the agility to easily adjust operations. As the automation technologies have become more sophisticated, set up times are decreasing, requiring less supervision and are allowing for the smooth integration and transformation of legacy supply chain systems.

The phases within traditional supply chain systems all acted as autonomous phases that had minimal visibility into the other segments of the chain, whereas, with automation, the supply chain is streamlined from end-to-end, enabling all different piece of the chain to be managed in tandem.

“As supply chain operations continue to shift focus to direct customer needs, autonomous robots can serve the end consumer with better service and faster response times. Emerging advancements in technology such as autonomous trucks, 3D printing and warehouse automation will foster changes in how shippers, retailers and manufacturers configure their supply chains and distribution strategies. The advancements will encourage industrial users to embrace and modernise their materials handling capabilities to meet the growing market demands.

The time for companies to assess their supply chains for piloting autonomous robots is now. Depending on needs and existing capabilities within the supply chain, implementing autonomous robots—from robotic process automation to self-guiding vehicles with artificial intelligence—can provide significant improvements in productivity and efficiency, while reducing labor costs and improving customer satisfaction.

While automating tasks is a much more convenient and efficient way to manage a supply chain and does provide immense benefits, managers and leaders within an organisation may prefer to be able to track specific actions and outputs. For that reason, many automation solutions provide a comprehensive & customised dashboards that give leaders visibility into all the necessary data and processes.

Even while most industries got on board years ago, logistics has been a bit slower to implement and reap the rewards of big data. Granted, the industry already leverages big data in a multitude of ways, but it is unquestionable that it could be better utilised to advance the industry even further. It’s necessary to have the right data in the right format at the right time available for all stakeholders. Establishing metrics facilitates this process by providing the vital data cleansing and predictive optimisation that logistics companies need to succeed.

Forecasting every aspect of the supply chain surely isn’t the easiest task, so more, accurate data, along with a platform that visualized that data, would be useful for better executing supply chain strategy. Recording data on every aspect of the business is the number one opportunity when we think about big data in terms of supply chain management. Exploiting every piece of data from every single step of the supply chain can bring immense value to businesses. It will ensure end-to-end visibility for all parties, greater efficiency, and optimis ed digital processes.

One way to acquire digital intelligence is by having data available from all aspects of the supply chain including manufacturing, e-commerce and retail data too will make it easier to improve processes and better plan for the future. However, the raw data itself is not enough, you have to transform the raw data into actionable insights which can be shared with all relevant stakeholders across the supply chain in a timely manner.

You need to find platform tools to make sense of the data – and you might want to be able to integrate it into your own systems to see all the information in one place. You also need to ensure that all your systems and devices are transferring data to you in your preferred format.

The insights that you gather may not only be useful for you, but also for your partners. At the end of the day, this type of data sharing in logistics can help to improve operational efficiency by capturing fluctuating customer demand, external factors, and the operations of your partners. It will improve transparency and help all stakeholders to streamline their processes, ultimately improving the quality of your processes, and the overall performance of your business as well.

As you gain more control over every aspect of your business, from optimising resource consumption to improving delivery routes, the increased efficiency will allow you to speed up your operations improve customer retention, and increase resolution of objectives. However, you certainly need to evaluate what data you can and want to share with your partners. Only some data will result in a win-win situation where the processes and solutions of both parties benefit. Tools already exist to foster business collaboration through this type of data sharing solution.

Clearly, big data itself is not enough. When you receive raw data in bulk, it’s not very useful. You must also have data processes in place to ensure the adequate storage of the data, comply with all the regulations and security, and ensure that the quality of the data is flawless, so you can validate and enrich it.

Once the data is validated you can create actionable insights for any number of purposes: improving partnerships and cooperation, managing external factors and risks, optimising routes, schedules, and deliveries, making sure you deliver everything on-time and boost customer satisfaction, and, ultimately, improving operational efficiency and becoming more profitable.

You can implement quick connections and message translations between supply chain partners and customers. Integrating with carriers, shippers, and the systems that they use to increase speed and agility. This seamless real-time flow of 100% accurate data, provides organisations the ability to analyze and optimize all supply chain processes.

It has been a long time since the supply chain has simply been a way to produce and deliver a product. It’s probably the primary source of competitive advantage within vehicle industries. The intelligent and connected supply chain builds upon network connectivity to integrate the latest digital technologies in a way that can transform every element of your business.

Connected supply chains enable growth through an extended digital world that unites employees, trading partners systems and things. You can boost your competitive edge with machine learning-based advanced analytics to predict outcomes, optimise and automate business operations, and take informed decisions.

Predictive maintenance is one example: Being able to predict when a part of sub-system of a serviceable product is likely to fail is a key investment area for the supply chain. Whether that part is within the production process, within the warehousing environment or part of a connected vehicle, an intelligent and connected supply chain can automatically monitor and analyze performance to boost operating capacity and lifespan. This system can intelligently decide whether the part needs to be replaced or repaired and can automatically trigger the correct process.

Another example is Proactive Replenishment. Reducing inventory levels while improving customer experience requires the ability to automate much of the replenishment process to continuously monitoring stock levels and re-stock as levels drop or demand grows. The connected supply chain provides real-time inventory visibility. As well as stock levels, it can indicate the condition of each item to ensure the quality of items. You can automate the replenishment of parts from the supplier before they are needed in the production process.

Supply chain visibility is key. Knowing where exactly an item is, what condition it is in and when it is going to be delivered is of vital importance to all supply chain operations. While the previous generation of tags and sensors could provide some information on location and condition, it was very limited. The connected supply chain provides improved end-to-end visibility of shipments ‘from floor to store’. It enables the continuous flow of data from highly connected supply chain ‘assets’ at every stage of the process. This includes tracking and monitoring improvements in ‘last mile’ delivery.

The concept of autonomously delivering products is slowly starting to become a reality. While there are many hurdles to overcome before the point is reached where there's no human intervention in the supply chain, there are many industrial examples that indicate it's feasible and practical.

An autonomous supply chain has the capability to process a request to grab a component from its location and to autonomously deliver this component to a specified delivery point, all without human intervention.

Key elements of such a system include the ability to: Interpret the request, Find the part's location, Load the part onto a transportation system, Identify the delivery point, Transport to the delivery point, Off load the part and provide feedback to the supply system. If all steps are automated and do not require human intervention, then the supply system is autonomous.

Is an Autonomous Supply Chain Feasible? In a real-life situation, an autonomous supply chain needs to be able to process thousands of requests, often in a very short period of time. It also has to have the ability to find different components and transport them automatically to multiple delivery points.

From this definition, it's clear there has to be a high degree of order and standardisation. Additionally, the entire process needs to be supervised by incorporating a comprehensive database that knows the location of every part and delivery point. It has to be able to compute the best route to the delivery point and to avoid congestion.

Provided these conditions can be met, an autonomous supply chain is feasible. There are many examples where such systems can be found. What is still far from feasible is an autonomous delivery system that's able to work outside of a rigidly controlled environment.

Manufacturers have been taking steps to organise and control their manufacturing processes for a long time. These systems possess the raw intelligence needed to identify the parts required to assemble a complete article, such as a motor vehicle. In fact, most systems are sophisticated enough to allow different products to be manufactured, in any sequence, on a single line. It was a relatively small step for manufacturers to organize automated and semi-automated delivery of components from the incoming goods warehouse to the production line, as and when required and in the correct sequence.

Tools used by such systems include Part identification: Machine-readable sensors and barcodes to physically identify components, Robotic picking: Automated forklifts to locate and fetch items, Intelligent transportation: The use of autonomous vehicles as well as transportation conveyors to deliver parts to specific locations, Feedback: As components are used, automated orders raised for new components.

Most of the interest at present is on the autonomous delivery of goods from suppliers to customers. This is things like drones dropping parcels off to mobile ground troops and platoons of trucks driving autonomously on highways.

Currently, all such systems are still in development, especially in terms of mass deployment. Still, many exciting ideas are being evaluated. A drone linked to a delivery truck that flew autonomously from the delivery truck to drop off a parcel and return while the truck continued on its route was tested. Other exciting concepts include autonomous ships sailing the oceans and the use of autonomous delivery robots.

Artificial intelligence is taking up the pace when it comes to global logistics and supply chain management. As per a number of executives from the transportation industry, these fields are expected to go through a more significant transformation. The on-going developments in the areas of technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and similar new technologies have the potential to bring innovation to these industries.

Artificial intelligence comes with computing techniques which helps to select large quantities of data that is collected from logistics and supply chain. You can put such methods to use, and they can be analyzed to get results which can initiate processes and complex functions.

The efficiencies of the company in the areas of network planning and predictive demand are getting improved with AI capabilities. Companies get to become more proactive by having a tool which can help with capacity planning and accurate demand forecasting. When they know what the market expects, they can quickly move the vehicles to the areas with more demand and thereby bring down the operational costs.

To avoid risks, anticipate events and come up with solutions, now techs are using data. The data helps companies to use their resources in the right way for maximum benefits, and artificial intelligence helps them with it more accurate and faster manner.

You can’t talk about artificial intelligence without mentioning robotics. Even though robotics is considered as a futuristic technology concept, the supply chain already makes use of it. They are used to track, locate and move inventory within the warehouses. Such robots come with deep learning algorithms which helps the robots make autonomous decisions regarding the different processes that are performed in the warehouse.

Apart from robots, artificial intelligence is also about big data. For the logistics companies, Big Data helps to optimise future performance and forecast accurate outlooks better than ever. When the insights of Big Data are used along with artificial intelligence, it helps to improve different areas of supply chain like transparency and route optimisation.

For AI in the logistics industry, coming up with clean data is a huge step, and they cannot implement without having such usable figures. It is not easy to measure efficiency because data comes from different sources. At the source level it is not possible to improve such data, and so algorithms are used to analyze data, enhance the quality of data, identify issues to attain transparency which can be used for business benefits.

When you are moving cargo across the world, it is always good to have a pair of eyes to monitor, and it can be best when it comes with state-of-the-art technology. Now you can see things in a new way by using computer vision which is based on artificial intelligence for the logistics.

Autonomous vehicles are the next big thing that artificial intelligence offers the supply chain. Having driverless trucks can take a while, but the logistics industry is now making use of high-tech driving to increase efficiency and safety. The significant change is expected in this industry in terms of assisted braking, lane-assist, and highway autopilot.

AI provides the supply chain with contextual intelligence which can be used by them to reduce the operating costs and manage inventory. The contextual information helps them to get back to the clients quickly.

Companies make use of AI along with machine learning to get new insights into different areas which include warehouse management, logistics and supply chain management. Some of the technologies used in these areas are AI-powered Visual Inspection to identify damage and carry out needed correction by taking photos of the cargo by using special cameras and Intelligent Robotic Sorting to sort palletized shipments, parcels and letters.

The opportunities to integrate autonomous drone logistics exist at every stage of the supply chain, where improved efficiencies, lower costs, safer work environments, and higher productivity levels are just a few of the returns organisations are seeing from their logistics drone investments.

Either your organisation prefers highly automated rules-based system to get supply chain work order request into hands of a technician virtually automatically, or a more manual system where Help Desk Dispatchers make decisions about when and who handles a particular work order.

1. Create, receive and route application-based work requests: Work request is basic communication tool for reporting supply chain problem so action can be initiated to get it fixed.

2. Obtain approvals as part of workflow if necessary: Generate workflows to mirror organisation processes for getting supply chain work done.

3. Receive supply chain alerts on critical issues in workflow: Allow for prioritising work must to be done and ability to work orders.

4. View comprehensive list of work orders in process: Provide supply chain activity feeds, grids and reporting capability to see what work has yet to be completed and how long work in backlog.

5. Highlight overdue work, or sort work orders on place, space, asset or technician basis: Offers supply chain tools and reports so available information to keep the operations running smoothly.

6. Link related work orders: Being able to group work orders allows for more efficient assignment of supply chain work to be done.

7. Attach drawings and specs, etc.: See drawings, pages of repair manuals and other documents to speed up supply chain and maintenance process.

8. Define supply chain schedule: Schedule work to be done so field-levels can submit work requests or query requests to see when it will be done.

9. Create and update supply chain Task Schedule of pending work orders: Use task schedules to keep track of what work is being done and when.

10. Schedule proactive supply chain Jobs: Any work request can be made repetitive by filling out additional checks defining dates, times and frequency; add reminders

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Top 10 Objectives 3D Print Machining Systems Gives Best Resource for Deploy Required Field Equipment

7/1/2019

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Now Marines are saying if something is broken, don’t throw it away. “Instead, we think about how we might repair it.” For example, recent experiments have focused on field-repair of vehicle piston heads. Testing the resilience and capability of 3D print systems is part of the Marines’ experimentation, but an even bigger part is developing practice at spotting opportunities for 3D Print to keep parts in use longer that might otherwise be discarded.

3D printing—particularly in metal—offers a promising way to obtain short-run parts in a hurry. For a business, the benefit is merely filling the order rapidly. But for the Marines, the benefit might be winning the battle by sourcing solutions to fix supply chain problems like a broken component required to return a downed piece of equipment to use.

Manufacturing parts through a 3D printer can cut down on time and cost in comparison to ordering specialized parts, especially if there is no longer a viable supply chain available for a specific part. It also allows engineers to design and construct brand-new designs and are able to test them. This capability provides engineers the creativity to no longer be constrained to the typical methods of manufacturing,

Is hybrid metal AM a part-making resource, a tool-making resource, a resource for repair? It depends on the need, and it depends on the perspective of the particular user thinking about this capability.

Headquarters Marine Corps is now looking at draft policy on additive manufacturing, and the feedback from the MAGTF experience is shaping that policy.

Marines involved in the additive manufacturing effort found all kinds of ways to innovate during the deployment. Within the size confines of the printer, the Marines found all kinds of things to print – wrenches, assembly parts, and protective covers to shield expensive equipment from repeated impact, and even a cover for a laser device that was on back order for seven months and was instead printed in a single day.

“If you have a cable assembly for your utilities, you can only order the entire assembly – but if you don’t need the entire assembly, you just need one little component, you could print that one component for a few dollars rather than have to order the entire assembly which may cost hundreds or even a couple thousand dollars spending on what the item is.

While DoD is interested in additive manufacturing, particularly downrange in operational scenarios where certain items might be harder to acquire, more work needs to be done by industry to certify 3D printed parts and prove that they can stand up to the stresses of military use.

Suppliers are developing “hybrid” applications, where 3D printing and traditional manufacturing techniques like forging are both used to make a qualified part. this technique is attractive for both the commercial and defense aerospace markets that need qualified parts but want to reap the benefits of 3D printing.

DoD is constantly struggling to find suppliers for parts on aging planes that the original manufacturers may no longer produce. In some cases, the companies that built the part have long exited the business, but the DoD requirements remain. Oftentimes we have parts that we can no longer get, and they’re in small numbers, so we can’t get interest in the part of an industry to build something when there’s only a small number and they have to retool or do that.

The only solution at the moment is to pay more. We often can find somebody, but at a really high price, and we’re stuck them because we don’t have any competition. We hope this will change in the near future, thanks to developments in 3D printing.

It’s hardly a new technology at this point, but things have changed for how DoD looks at the potential of 3D printing. The first is that the technology has become more widespread and adopted across the Pentagon.

Where even a few years ago there was resistance to the idea a 3D printed part could be as reliable as a classically forged piece, there is now acceptance that parts printed via additive manufacturing can be secure and stable.

For a globally deployed force, getting something delivered in the right place at the right time can be challenging. DoD is is undertaking a variety of logistics initiatives to help ease that burden and make the force more lethal, and improve visibility of where things are and where they need to be in a decentralised way. That will give it the agility to be proactive, and enable the logistics support to be out in front of where operators need these things.

This logistics command and control will be absolutely essential to link the different capabilities to the people to the different assets to provide the rapid response capability that a combatant commander will need. DoD can’t do this alone, but rather will require support from the industrial base, international partners and the joint force.

In terms of specific initiatives to improve service-wide logistics, additive manufacturing is playing a large role. DoD has been pursing this for some years and still has work to do, advancements in 3D printing allow the force to not worry about the supplying and ordering of parts cutting out the supply chain and reducing timelines for making parts.

The next phase for the service in terms of 3D printing is mainstreaming the process, which means transitioning from plastic parts to metal. Plastic works really well, but we don’t want to replace all aircraft parts with a piece made out of plastic.

“Can we find better ways to maintain these airplanes? Is there some new technology that can help us? Or some new repair processes?”

The 3D printing process is one way to do that.

“We’re responsible for all the maintenance, repair and overhaul of all components that come off the aircraft."

The team has a wide variety of things to maintain, including many parts that would require an expensive bulk buy in the supply chain when they really need only one or two. Examples include mic switch knobs, crew compartment panels, sun visor brackets, and armrests.

The unit already uses 3D printers in various sizes, but they want others with flexible technologies to support making parts that engineers haven’t necessarily thought of yet.
The standby compass cockpit panel dashboard is something the unit is currently prototyping.

Even with larger items, which require more durable parts and aren’t suited to 3D production, 3D prototyping streamlines the process by experimenting with designs that will be manufactured later with metal.

“You’re using the 3D printed technology in order to deliver a prototype that confirms form, fit and function … and then you can be confident of your repair solution or your new part, delivering that to the traditional, organic manufacturing unit that’s going to use multi-axis milling machines to cut metal into that part.

The in-house 3D process is much faster than going back and forth with outside suppliers for parts. “Once you get the geometry, you can print it overnight and have it the next day."

To identify the geometry of the part and print it takes only a couple days. “With diminishing sources of supply, the benefit for us is the flexibility and the agility to respond to a warfighter need.

“The benefit is speed. That’s our bottom line."

Marines have now deployed self-contained hybrid additive manufacturing facility called the “ExMan” unit, or Expeditionary Manufacturing. The ExMan represents potentially the most effective resource yet for enabling deployed personnel to be self-sufficient in providing for their own critical hardware needs, offering a model for how an established manufacturer might proceed with additive, because the Marines are following a learning curve comparable to what a machine shop might expect.

ExMan is already aiding and saving cost for Marines even though it has yet to be deployed and will provide a valuable alternative to existing supply of, for example, unmanned aerial vehicles—drones. These devices are still new, and prone to break frequently. As yet, there is no formal supply chain for needed parts, because there is no understanding yet of what replacement parts are key or how frequently they will be ordered. As a result, some needed parts have a lead time longer than one year. In response, the Marines have been keeping drones flying by making needed parts through 3D printing.

One example of this relates to recognising the use cases. Marine team is developing and evaluating the capabilities of the ExMan. “Having hardware supplies at the point of need is always a problem. For instance, a broken steering-column pinion gear might render a Humvee inoperative, but obtaining this replacement part far forward in the field fast enough to matter might be close to impossible. To respond to problems like this, Marines have long done manufacturing in the field. Existing portable machine shops offer milling or turning capabilities.

Marines are exploring the problem of the pinion gear. Is it now possible to solve a problem such as this one in the field? That is, is it possible to return the Humvee with this problem back to use quickly? The component is too difficult to make through machining alone, but perhaps straightforward to make through hybrid AM. For example, what about 3D printing gear teeth onto a piece of metal tubing? The “innovative mindset” consists simply of this: Recognising that many formerly prohibitive supply chain challenges are no longer prohibitive when additive is added to machining.

Yet a part like a pinion gear is too challenging for systems such as these, for multiple reasons. The part is too complex to make on a lathe or mill in an exigent setting, and carrying enough raw material to be prepared to make a part such as this would represent a problem in itself, since machining a shaft with gear teeth out of solid stock would mean cutting a lot of material away.

Attempting this additive manufacturing at a tactical level was part of an “advancing the force” mission assigned to the MAGTF, to push the Marine Corps closer to its vision laid out in the latest Marine Corps Operating Concept.

As the Marines look to implement the vision outlined in the Marine Corps Operating Concept, the 3D printing initiative to make parts for which the Marine Corps owns the design and can alter it as needed as mission requirements and the threat environment change – are providing a first look at what Marine operations in the next decade may look like.

“The Marines were coming back from deployment saying that we’re seeing quadcopters and things like that going over our positions, so we started to inject that into our training.

“There’s not a lot the regiment can do on its own in order to defeat that threat, so we really worked on mitigating it – practicing good procedures, reducing our signature so we’d be less vulnerable to it.

And then when we deployed we stepped it up a notch – because we were at so many locations across the theater and there are so many different approaches being taken by the joint force, we were exposed to almost all of them, so we tried to bring that together so we can harness that and build that knowledge for our Marines.”

Using the drones in MAGTF operating forward is the perfect setup for innovation and learning that comes from having the full range of Marine Corps assets operating under a single commander.

“It Provides a bias of problem-solving and looking for original solutions, because you have that mix of different capabilities. Also, from an operational standpoint, “some of the best innovation comes when people have practical problems they’re trying to solve. It actually stimulates the creativity to advance the state of the art. That’s kind of what we lived every day.”

Many of the Marines involved already had experience with writing codes, using 3D printers, soldering and other skills needed for the drone assembly, so “just taking advantage of the natural talents we already had out there, we were able to pull them in and use them to our advantage. It helped retention – the Marines were very excited that we were able to do some things faster than we otherwise would have.”

The drone-printing effort contributed to several learning efforts. Hybrid Logistics Working Group had been stood up, with additive manufacturing being a prime focus for the group.

“As we wrestled with additive manufacturing at the tactical level, whenever we came into a supply chain conflict we were able to tap into that group in order to start to address some of those questions.

“What we learned from that is, you need the push-pull, where Marines at the lower tactical level are trying to solve problems today, and you need that immediate feedback to the policy level so that they can remove barriers, because we naturally found them.

“This is new and everybody is exploring it. Through that working group we were able to do it a lot faster.”

A 3D printer works by taking a three-dimensional image or model, and printing the part one layer at a time, upward from the bottom-most layer. The layers are fused together by some sort of adhesive agent. The printer may take hours to finish a part, depending on the level of complexity and size.
This innovative capability enables maintainers to create one-off modifications of aircraft parts at reduced costs in terms of both time and materials to aid in the advancement of Edward’s unique test and evaluation mission.

But the dilemmas are these: Metal AM systems are generally costly, bulky relative to the size of parts they produce and difficult to use given the safety considerations necessary for handling powder metal. These factors are problematic for a machine shop, and prohibitive when it comes to the prospect of letting the Marines use metal 3D printing in the field.

And for the Marines, one more concern is that metal 3D printing ought to operate in conjunction with CNC machining within a single setup, for the sake of truly obtaining the part as fast as possible. That is, the Marines’ interest is in “hybrid” AM combining additive and subtractive operations. For all these reasons, a small CNC milling machine with an add-on metal 3D-printing head comprises the heart of a system Marines are evaluating for making repairs and replacements to hardware items in the field, far from traditional supply chains.

Hybrid system offers an extreme version of the experience a machine shop might have in adding metal AM to its capabilities. The metal 3D printing head mounts onto an existing CNC milling machine in parallel with the metal cutting spindle. The resulting hybrid system can 3D print features and machine those features to tolerance within the same setup.

Heads for metal 3D printing are supplied via various methods of metal deposition, including laser melting of powder spray, arc melting of wire feed, and high-velocity cold spray of metal powder. In the ExMan, the wire-fed metal 3D-printing head mounts parallel to the spindle on a milling machine, producing a system that can build 3D features and then mill and drill them to precise tolerances within a single setup.

The input material is solid wire instead of powder and because current is used to melt the material rather than a laser. It’s not a normal arc-welding process, which generally includes some level of porosity, but instead a lower-heat approach that enables effective deposition of metals at full density.”

This 3D printing by deposition, meaning placing metal along a precise tool path rather than using a powder bed, means a complete 3D part can be built up onto a flat surface. It also means a 3D feature can be built just as easily onto an existing part, with the existing part used as the starting work surface. In short, hybrid manufacturing is a resource for repairing or modifying existing components every bit as much as a resource for making components from scratch.

The search for metal 3D printing capability was blocked at first because powder-bed selective laser melting systems were seen to be unsuitable for deployment and use in the field, given their cost, size and safety requirements.

Now the challenge and the opportunity of metal AM lies in the mindset change necessary to reevaluate challenges such as this. Marines—just like shops adopting AM—need to rethink long-standing assumptions about what kinds of parts can now be fabricated quickly.

Building and fielding the drone allowed Marines the opportunity to develop an understanding of how these things are put together and manufactured locally. And then how can it be used, what are its strengths and weaknesses, what are its limitations so that the Marines better understand what tools can be applied to counter the threats that were being used against them?

To meet objectives, we commissioned this case study to not only optimise current equipment product support Job Site operations and enhance dedication to Field-Level Troops product support services, but also provide the services with the tools, templates and real world strategies so we have capacity to sustain these improvements into the future.

We established the following Job Site scope areas, which framed the objectives of this Case Study:

1. Optimise allocation of Job Site product support resources, including oversight of routine, peak & specialty work orders

2. Design product support programmes for field level unit outreach at Job Sites, including mission-driven reporting & surveys

3. Propose product support approach for receipt of individualised Job Site service level work orders with field-level units

4. Maximise "wrench turning" produce at Job Sites, including product support programmes for continued training, incentives & performance

5. Establish core product support Job Site services, specialised services evaluation & changing conditions.

6. Enhance Job Site performance metrics, including key product support performance indicators, techniques & reporting

7. Provide framework for evaluating the Job Site costs/ benefits of expanded product support services to existing or new troop units

8. Conduct Job Site space requirements assessment, addressing barriers to efficient product support operations
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9. Optimise Job Site operations, including product support policies, procedures & performance requirements for on-hand stock parts/tools

10. Evaluate Job Site product support work order rate-setting systems and recommend adjustments to rate setting & replacement

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