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| May 2011
Welcome 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. We welcome the following companies/organizations into NCMS: OBD Solutions (www.obdsol.com) Leader in advanced On Board Diagnostics (OBD II) technologies for vehicles. CTMA Project Completion: Integrating Sensors and Predictive Maintenance Systems with Performance Support Technology to Increase CH-53 Readiness and Reliability DoD participants: PMA-261 (CH-53E Program Office); HMT 302 Marine Corps Air Station New River, NC; Fleet Readiness Center East; Fleet Readiness Center Southeast CH-53E Helicopter readiness rates are declining due to maintenance groundings associated with high operational tempo, component breakdown, and age-related problems, such as structural fatigue and rotor wear and tear. Each CH-53E helicopter requires more than 40 hours of maintenance for each flight-hour of operation. There are approximately 145 operational CH-53E airframes in the fleet. PMA-261 spends roughly $500M per year on fleet maintenance. The purpose of this project was to join the Integrated Mechanical Diagnostic System (IMDS), a Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS), with an Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS) to provide CH-53E helicopter maintenance technicians with a seamless prognostic, diagnostic, and repair suite that measurably increases the readiness and availability of the aircraft while reducing or eliminating associated maintenance expenditures. The suite is composed of three main consoles: System Developer, Maintenance Control/Admin, and Maintainer. The System Developer console is used to make modifications to the system such as technical manual updates and procedural changes. The Maintenance Control/Admin console is used for creating and managing user accounts, as well as receiving updates from the System Developer console. Finally, the Maintainer console is used by the maintainer as a point-of-maintenance tool that aids maintainers to troubleshooting, repairing and maintaining the various systems on the CH-53E. Achieving a 3% reduction in maintenance costs through faster and more accurate troubleshooting could result in a $15.3M in annual cost savings at PMA-261. Findings suggest that savings could be high as $50M if 10% maintenance cost avoidance is achieved. NCMS Program Manager is Doyle Maleche, doylem@ncms.org, 360-782-1370. Thanks for your participation in the 2011 CTMA Symposium Plenary speakers put forth their needs and requirements, and the deputy commanders panel spelled out technology needs and deployment practices. We would like to thank RW Appleton and Co, Inc., and Technical Objectives Professionals, LLC (TOP Inc.) for their sponsorship of the tour of the Marine Corps Museum, which is well worth your time. The 2012 CTMA Symposium is tentatively scheduled for March 26-29 at the Fleet Readiness Center Southwest near San Diego. 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. |
| © 2011 |
