CTMA Connector September 2012: DoD Maintenance Update

We welcome the following organizations into NCMS:

Tracen Technologies, Inc. (www.tracen.com)

Tracen is a technology products and services company specializing in integrated mobile and web technology solutions. Tracen’s flagship product, COMMANDmobile®, is a web based integrated product suite featuring mobile data collection, intelligent dispatching and role based security.

Troika Solutions, LLC (www.troikasol.com)

Troika is a veteran-owned small business with over 90-years of senior Marine Corps and DoD experience. Troika has been on the cutting edge of military system lifecycle management including requirements development, logistics and acquisition strategy analysis and implementation, and system fielding. From analyses to subject matter expert support, Troika combines strategy with an understanding of technology and innovation to deliver successful results.

Come Visit NCMS/CTMAat the 2012 Defense Maintenance Symposium, 13-16 November in beautiful Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Vote us best booth again where we will be showcasing five of our member companies and their capabilities including:

• Eclypse International
• Spectro, Inc
• Imaginestics, LLC
• PerfectPoint
• Curtiss Wright Corporation

Completed Project:  Implementation of Predictive Modeling in Support of USMC Systems Command – Product Group Nine (PG 09)

As platforms age, failures occur and must be handled by the maintenance processes. These events drive requirements for repair parts, placing demand on the supply system. For example, if the fleet has a surge in operations, the number of failures, maintenance events, and required repair parts likewise increase. If these requirements are not met, scheduled operations may not be met.

Repairs and replacements at the operational and intermediate levels for most components are handled internally by the United States Marine Corps (USMC); a limited number of secondary repairable items (SECREPS) are identified and contracted logistics support (CLS) programs are put into place for repair and return of unservice­able SECREPS.

The Clockwork Solutions, Inc.’s Total Life Cycle Management Assessment Tool (TLCM-AT) simulation model takes all of these rules into consideration. TLCM-AT was used to run “what if” scenarios on maintenance, logistics, policies, removal of parts for repair; and spare consumption. Analyses help to ensure that the forecasted project returns an investment over time in terms of readiness and costs. More detail is provided in Section 2.1 and Appendix A.

The TLCM-AT baseline model served as a starting point for scenario development, and
is essentially a snapshot of the current com­position, disposition and state of the fleet
(Section 2.2). This included the work break­down structure and configuration of each individual Medium Tactical Vehicle Replace­ment (MTVR), any spare parts on-hand or soon to be delivered, the current age and mileage of each vehicle and component, and the current status (functional or deadlined) of each vehicle and component. The outcome of this analysis showed that armored MTVRs performed worse across all selected metrics than unarmored, most pronounced for vehicles in-theatre, and worsening over time.

In the future, further analysis can be applied to develop provisioning plans to minimize delay to repair or replace components. For example, follow-on analysis can answer the questions:

• How can provisioning strategy improve availability of armored MTVRs?
• What is the best balance of cost and logistics performance in provisioning to support armored MTVRs?
• How can provisioning be applied to deliver more consistent logistics performance in the armored MTVR fleet?

Global Combat Support System-Marine Corps (GCSS-MC) requirements stemmed from supply difficulties experienced during Operation Iraqi Freedom. A faulty network led to front-line Warfighters being unable to update request information and order supplies, resulting in Marine supply erring on the side of safety and sending above and beyond front-line require­ments, resulting in overage of front-line inventory.

GCSS-MC decreases MTVR maintenance customer wait time and the proportion of maintainers’ time spent on administrative tasks. Fewer adminis­trative hours gives the GCSS-MC maintenance process more flexibility to cope with a surge in demand.

During work conducted by Clockwork Solutions, Inc. (CSI) to assist in the subset of sustainment block planning encompassing repair parts, a requirement to explore cases where Class IX block performance may be improved was demonstrated.  The work also highlights issues with Marine Corps data correlation. Specifically, technical manuals do not match Item Applications (Item Apps) data. This hinders employment of modeling and simulation tools to provide insight into the multiple future possibilities the MPF, or any Marine Corps element, may face. It is likely the development of more models to analyze Class IX will reveal more areas to improve materiel availability (Ma) through better sparing strategies.

The USMC Systems Command, Product Group 09 (PG09), Operational Force Systems (OFS) requires the use of the predictive life cycle modeling of Marine Corps ground weapon systems, as well as professional modeling and consulting support, to support various life cycle and product support analyses. Through this project, models previously developed with the TLCM-AT, as well as new system models were applied to support predictive analysis for Marine Corps Systems Command, and other Marine Corps agencies that require the use of predictive modeling.

Comprehensive life cycle scenario analysis will help the Program Managers, Life Cycle Logisticians, and leaders at the Enterprise level more clearly articulate Table of Authorized Materiel Control Numbers (TAMCNs) specific supportability requirements as they relate to system performance over time, to include: cost, operational availability, materiel availability and reliability.

Benefits

Predictive life cycle modeling of weapons systems results in predictive analysis/modeling that directly leads to:

• Enhanced supportability requirements, increasing availability of parts to the Warfighter; and reducing delay and cost by ensuring materiel availability/reliability.
• Determination that incentives for early delivery of parts have a greater impact than penalties for late delivery of parts.
• Each MTVR being a “collection of Line Replaceable Units,” the Performance Based Logistics (PBL) contract’s optimization of materiel availability at affordable cost expands service and readiness for the Warfighter.
• TLCM-AT model directly reflects the composition and disposition of the entire MTVR fleet, with its consideration of all vehicle characteristics, including date placed into service, operational use tempo, and known miles driven per year.

The primary benefits of implementing GCSS-MC include two thirds fewer required man-hours for maintainer’s administrative duties, and a 25% decrease in average Customer Wait Time (CWT) – a savings of almost 20 days:

• Free hours from administrative duties afford the GCSS-MC Maintenance process more flexibility to absorb increases in demand while continuing acceptable service levels.
• Additional benefits of GCSS-MC include increased efficiency measured by fewer averge MTVRs in maintenance at any random time.

Decreased shipping times and parts delay improve CWT but also increase maintainer utilization. GCSS-MC puts Maintenance in a better position for these changes by reducing manpower requirements from other administrative sources.

GCSS-MC provides web-based technology for Marines to access and update near real-time information from any location or time. GCSS-MC combines data from maintenance, supply, and finance into a single, secure system to improve logistics, support, and warfighting capabilities.

Low Ma was observed in packages using current Class IX sparing levels. Risk-based sparing packages can be increase Ma by as much as 50%. Savings are represented as spare platforms that need to be acquired to achieve an average of 95% Ma over the first 30 days with the current Class IX blocks (Table 1).

Table 1. Summary of Results in Terms of Ma Gain (increase in platform
availability) and Cost of Repair Part Inventory

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. © 2012