The CTMA Connector February 2011 | National Center for Manufacturing Sciences

February 2011Welcome to The CTMA Connector, a monthly newsletter designed to provide news and ideas about the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) program. The CTMA program is a joint Department of Defense/National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (DoD/NCMS) effort promoting collaborative technology development between industry and the DoD maintenance and repair facilities. This newsletter highlights ongoing projects, serves as a forum for promoting new project ideas, and provides other news of interest to the program. Our goal is to stimulate your participation and solicit your input. Feel free to submit items for the newsletter as well as any suggestions to make it more useful. More information about the program can be found at http://ctma.ncms.org/.To subscribe or unsubscribe to the CTMA Connector, send a message to:listserv@listserv.ncms.org with “subscribe CTMANewsletter” or “unsubscribe CTMANewsletter” in the message body.

Featured at the 2011 CTMA Symposium:

Major General James A. Kessler

Commanding General

Marine Corps Logistics Command

April 4-6

Quantico, VA

The CTMA Symposium:

Creates networking opportunities among the DOD facilities, and among industry and DoD.
Provides transparency of various maintenance facility needs, which then permits other attendees to provide input and/or join forces.
Provides a fertile hunting ground for other potential collaborations for technology development and implementation.

The Symposium will focus on the rapid response to the needs of the warfighter and will include DoD experts on warfighter needs, depot deputy commanders outlining their current needs, and project showcases/presentations. The working agenda and registration can be found at http://www.ncms.org/2011CTMA/agenda.htm.

Recently Completed Project: Item Unique Identifier Markings for Legacy Parts

DoD Participants: Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC); U.S. Air Force Materiel Command

The Department of Defense (DoD) in 2003 mandated that all parts meeting specified criteria receive Item Unique Identifier (IUID) marks. The mandate can be relatively easily implemented for new acquisitions, but the non-recurring engineering (NRE) cost for updating the technical data for hundreds of thousands of legacy National Item Identification Numbers (NIINs) and physically marking millions of legacy parts in inventory is a daunting task that has delayed implementation for legacy NIINs. To address at least a significant portion of the total legacy part issue, an automated IUID Engineering Change Order (ECO) process was successfully developed under this CTMA IUID project.

The system has been validated using actual parts and their related TDP and TO data from the Oklahoma Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC). Preliminary results show that this system can immediately provide substantial cost savings to all defense services in their non-recurring cost in creating ECOs for legacy parts that require IUID markings.

The following benefits are being realized:

· Helped establish a fixed cost (15:1 cost reduction from current $3,000 rate) and 80% cycle time reduction per ECO creation for an IUID marking for legacy parts.

· Improved quality and reduction in human errors of marking identification on the drawings.

· Established a cost-effective process for IUID part-marking and ECO creation, so others across DoD can adopt it.

· In the short term, has potential to substantially impact the non-recurring cost- and time-savings for all of the defense services for IUID markings for legacy parts.

· A financial benefit analysis indicated a maximum potential cost savings of over $700M if project technology is deployed to all branches of service as quickly as possible.

· The estimated return on investment of broad deployment is about 25:1.

The NCMS Program Manager is Tony Haynes, tonyh@ncms.org, 734-995-4930.

New NCMS Website debuts:

Check out the new NCMS website at http://www.ncms.org. It is designed to more easily access information that would be helpful to you. We would also welcome your feedback so that we can continuously improve the site. Let me know your critiques, positive and constructive by contacting chuckr@ncms.org.

We appreciate your feedback. Please contact Chuck Ryan with suggestions or input on other topics that would be of interest to you in this newsletter. The CTMA Program is sponsored by the Department of Defense; the content of this newsletter does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the government; no official endorsement should be inferred.