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2018 DoD Maintenance Symposium Confirms Maintenance is Key to Readiness

Maintenance is the generator of readiness. Get the parts and we’ll generate the weapons systems to generate the readiness.

Without question, maintenance and sustainment is the heartbeat of today’s military enterprise. Throughout the 2018 DoD Maintenance Symposium held in Tampa, FL, December 17-20, recurring topics of innovation, collaboration, and empowerment underpinned the event theme of Maintaining America’s Lethal Competitive Edge. With a centrally-located, award-winning 20’ X 30’ booth, NCMS with its CTMA Program, was a hub for maintenance and sustainment decision-makers to view innovative technologies from seven NCMS industry partners.

Equipois: zeroG® Arm System
The award-winning zeroG mechanical arm allows tools, parts, and other payloads to be maneuvered as if weightless, but with complete freedom of motion, providing its users with a level of performance that is unmatched by crane-based systems, torque arms, and tool balancers.

Maglogix®: Multi-Pole
Switchable Permanent Magnets Maglogix has developed next-generation magnetic technology that allows for nearly unlimited applications in steel fabrication, repair, and welding. Utilizing patented Multi-Pole technology, Maglogix is able to create the world’s most powerful magnetic devices achieving full holding power starting on the thinnest steel.

One Network: Maintenance, Repair, and Operations for Defense Agencies
One Network provides a tailored defense core with a data model and transaction backbone that enables defense agencies to integrate closely with each other in joint mission environments and deliver a “single version of the truth” over legacy systems and defense agencies ERPs to allow true real-time collaboration across the network.

Siemens: Product Lifecycle Management for Aircraft Sustainment & Support
Teamcenter®, digital lifecycle management software, that enables global enterprises to engage every facet of requirements development to the retirement of systems and platforms. Integrated idea capture and data management, real-time conferencing, conflict resolution, and supplier and program management tools are combined with industry-leading open design and development solution in a single, shared source of system and platform knowledge.

Spectro Scientific, an AMETEK company: FieldLab 58M Expeditionary Fluid Analysis System
The FieldLab 58M is a rugged, portable expeditionary fluid analysis system that gives operators in the field the ability to perform comprehensive, mobile lubricant sampling. The battery-powered device enables complete lubricant assessment for condition monitoring and rapid results that permit informed maintenance decisions.

Temple Allen Industries: Stand-up Abrading Machine (SAM™)
The Temple Allen SAM is configured with a random orbital 5” pad as an alternative for those applications requiring moderately-aggressive scuffing, sanding, and removal of paint. While not as aggressive as its paint stripping counterpart, SAM is an ideal tool for moderate levels of surface preparation.

Wet Technologies: Wet Blast and High-Pressure Solutions
The Wet Technologies process provides scalable, self-contained systems combining water, media, and compressed air which can efficiently derust, descale, strip, and etch surfaces. Faults such as cracks can be exposed to prepare for liquid penetration inspection.

Never before had maintenance felt so critical and disruptive solutions, such as AM and predictive maintenance, been such a focus. The National Defense Strategy hones in on the need to recover readiness. Therefore, the exchange of ideas, private/public networking opportunities, data gathering for informed decision-making, and improved process discussions, all important aspects of the Symposium, fit into that mandate.

According to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Kenneth Watson, the DoD Maintenance Symposium is an excellent chance to establish new contacts and renew old ones in this ever-changing world. He asked the disturbing questions of the attendees, “Are we good? Or simply good enough?” With the emergence once again of Russia and now China’s global influence and investment around the world, the Honorable Robert McMahon, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment highlighted the notion that the DoD needs to think differently about the ability to repair, resupply, and sustain. With readiness at about 50%, that is not a passing grade, but that also provides an opportunity, a challenge to get to where needed.

According to high-level decision-makers from all branches of service, hot topics at the 2018 Maintenance Symposium were:

  • Putting the over 1.5 billion maintenance activity records to good use by providing information towards predictive condition-based maintenance before failures happen.
  • Services need to be more ready, resilient, and flexible, with an emphasis on logistics, modernization, and culture reform.
  • Service collaboration and the use of data analytics to support warfighters here and those on foreign deployment.
  • Rethinking reliance on fixed-hub maintenance facilities.
  • Increased use of sensors, point-of-use apps, and asset tracking technology.
  • Awareness of imminent talent shortfalls such as drivers, which could result in a transportation “Achilles Heel.”
  • Boosting the use and analysis of “Big Data” that can provide accurate, real-time, useful, integrated, and accessible information to inform targeted decision-making.

Once again, it was apparent that the answers to all these issues lies with a collaboration between the government and the industrial base to fill the gaps. Brigadier General Kyle Robinson, USAF stated that “we need to own our own destiny,” which includes managing the supply chain, being more agile, and looking and thinking proactively.

The DoD Maintenance Symposium is the synthesis for what the Secretary of Defense states in the National Defense Strategy and NCMS has been working in lockstep to be a hub of collaboration that enhances warfighter readiness.

We cannot expect success fighting tomorrow’s conflicts with yesterday’s weapons or equipment. To address the scope and pace of our competitors’ and adversaries’ ambitions and capabilities, we must invest in the modernization of key capabilities through sustained, predictable budgets. Our
backlog of deferred readiness, procurement, and modernization requirements has grown in the last 15 years and can no longer be ignored. ◉