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NCMS PROJECT TEAM WINS DEFENSE MANUFACTURING EXCELLENCE AWARD

NCMS Teams Have Received Five Awards Since 2002

ANN ARBOR, MI – November 29, 2006. The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) today announced that it has been awarded a Defense Manufacturing Excellence Award at the Defense Manufacturing Conference being held in Nashville, TN. The award recognizes project teams in the defense manufacturing community that have significantly contributed to the understanding, development, or application of manufacturing techniques, processes, methods, practices, or management throughout the nation.

NCMS industry partners and the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) initiative, under the auspices of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Materiel Readiness and Maintenance Policy, were recognized for their Enhanced Wiring Integrity Systems (EWIS) project.

The EWIS project was a four-year joint services collaborative NCMS project formed to address electrical wiring issues based on end user input. Electronic wiring problems annually cause thousands of mission aborts and result in hundreds of thousands of hours where aircraft are not available for use. Wiring maintenance issues also consume several million maintenance work-hours a year. This project focused on the need to increase mission readiness at reduced cost by requiring less overall maintenance.

NCMS member companies Eclypse International (Corona, CA) and Sikorsky Aircraft Company (Stratford, CT), and the DoD joint services represented by Seymour Johnson Air Force Base (North Carolina), Navy Depot (Jacksonville, FL), Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (New Hampshire), North Island (San Diego, CA), Tobyhanna Army Depot (Pennsylvania), and the Ogden Air Logistics Center (Utah) collaborated to make this project successful.

“The EWIS project is a great example of how NCMS member companies deliver quantifiable benefits to the military,” said NCMS Vice President Chuck Ryan. “Our cross industry collaborative projects deliver new technology that improves materiel readiness and reduces cost for the Department of Defense.”

The most significant new technology used by the project team is the standing wave reflectometer (SWR) which is based on an NASA patent licensed to Eclypse International. This technology is embedded in an easy-to-use handheld meter that an operator can use to rapidly connect, detect and find hard faults in wiring assemblies. The data is then downloaded to a personal computer where SWR software is used to detect and find wiring faults within inches.

As a result, the joint service depot maintenance activities using the EWIS technology are successfully addressing three specific wiring problem areas; aircraft, dockside and shipboard cranes, and high-density electronic motherboards in transportable communication shelters. The EWIS tools are being deployed at additional sites as these problem areas are being addressed by the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines. Significant cost, cycle time, and reliability improvements are being realized by all users.

Widespread implementation of this technology is expected across the services because of the success of pilot programs which proved the capability of EWIS technology. Examples of demonstrated savings include:

• The test and repair of circuit breaker panels on 24 EA-6B "Prowler" aircraft which resulted in savings of over $950,000.

• Troubleshooting wiring problems in mobile Army communication shelters was reduced by over 50%, allowing more shelters to be available to the warfighter.

• Identifying faulty relays in Navy dockside cranes avoided $60,000 per day of delay in submarine servicing costs while in dry dock.

For more information about EWIS, contact NCMS Program Manager, Lee Patch at (734) 995-4972 or visit http://www.ncms.org.

About NCMS

The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) is the largest cross-industry collaborative research and development consortium in North America, and is the only consortial effort in the U.S. devoted exclusively to manufacturing technologies, processes and practices. NCMS has over 20 years of experience in the formation and management of complex, multi-partner collaborative R&D programs, and is backed by corporate members representing virtually every manufacturing sector.

For more information, visit http://www.ncms.org

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