Courtesy Photo | Elizabeth Gordon, NAVSUP WSS Philadelphia LOGCELL (left), and Russ Knaub, Product...... read more read more
In January, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly implemented the “Make Ford Ready” initiative to bolster repair and operational testing efforts on the $13 billion, first-in-class carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford. Recently, the Navy introduced Naval Sustainment System-Supply (NSS-Supply) to streamline supply chains, decrease maintenance turnaround times, increase end-to-end velocity of spares, and reduce costs.
“Naval Sustainment System-Supply is on the hunt for leverage to make our supply chains run more effectively and affordably to improve readiness,” said Rear. Adm. Peter Stamatopoulos, NAVSUP Commander.
NAVSUP Weapon Systems Support’s Aviation Launch and Recovery (ALRE) team leveraged NSS-Supply to enable rapid program improvement on the first-of-its-kind Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), with the ultimate goal of shaping both the sustainment enterprise and class-wide support.
“A frequent comment from Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE) leadership has surrounded the sparing posture on Ford and the risks to schedule execution that inadequacy might present,” said Lt. Cmdr. Dave Couchman, NAVSUP WSS ALRE Branch Head. “ Understanding Ford experienced a minimal interim support period and initial sparing was accomplished with engineering estimates prior to having meaningful operational run time, and given realized failures in Post-Deployment Trials and Testing (PDT&T), is she spared properly for cyclic operations through deployment and beyond?”
NAVSUP WSS coordinated with sustainment partners to identify parts with highest risk; stratifying by impact to primary mission sets, according to Couchman. The team dedicated a full day to each system, fully aligned with NSS-Supply initiatives to focus specifically on increasing end-to-end velocity, leaning on repair pipelines, understanding demand profiles, improving vendor partnerships, and addressing working capital fund solvency issues in order to ultimately unify the sustainment enterprise toward a common goal.
“This is the largest single end-to-end effort I’ve ever been a part of, hands down,” said Russ Knaub, Product Support Manager at NAVAIR PMA-251.
“We pulled in stakeholders from PMA-251, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWC AD) Lakehurst, Commander, Naval Air Forces Atlantic, Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime, General Atomics, and had the USS Gerald R. Ford dial in from at-sea to conduct a focused deep dive,” said Couchman.
“We did an end-to-end on a total of 69 parts – 39 for EMALS and 30 for AAG, encompassing all critical parts that could independently cause potential loss or degradation of primary mission capability, or “single downers” as coordinated with PMA-251. This is all about delivering readiness to the fleet through data-driven decision making.”
During the deep dive, the team took a four-question approach to conducting the deep dive analysis.
“First, what part are we looking at, what does it do, and what capability does that system deliver? Next, what is NAVSUP WSS’ as-is state, and are our planning factors for procurement lead times, repair times, etc. correct? If not, we changed it on-the-spot and re-ran the numbers,” said Couchman. “Then we dove specifically into what’s going on with each part, asking if demand was above where we thought it would be initially while firmly coupling reliability and sparing efforts in real-time with engineers, the Program Office, DLA, TYCOM, the ship, and industry partners.”
The final question the team looked to answer was how to make the entire process better together.
Through the focused deep dive and end-to-end review, the team was able to draw a number of conclusions. The first addressed the critical Navy Working Capital Fund.
“First, we are generally well postured to support demand through PDT&T and beyond and we were able to use validated data to support that point. About $1.6 million in cost avoidance was accomplished through Purchase Request reductions,” said Couchman. “Ensuring working capital fund solvency while delivering cost-wise readiness is not only a core mission for us at NAVSUP WSS, but an NSS-Supply imperative.”
Keeping with the core focus of the event, delivering readiness, ALRE was able to rapidly affect a projected 25-percent reduction in unfilled customer orders without additional working capital funds outlays.
“Through negotiation of throughputs with our industry partners, accelerating needed material, looking at timing to need and coordinating in real-time with our primary customer, we were able to ensure both the requirements and program support were right-sized to need,” said Couchman.
The EMALS and AAG review also revealed opportunities to improve data flows between mission partners and to fuse data systems that were not otherwise interconnected, most notably through including Electronic Maintenance Log (EML) data held with NAWC AD Lakehurst.
“A lot of our repair turnaround times were assumptions based on aged process maps and we’ve been able to improve some of our forecasting,” according to Couchman. “The Navy also wasn’t feeding DLA the right demand signal early on in the ship’s life span, so we fixed that on the spot by pulling in EML data; in lock step with the NSS-Supply pillar of Navy Demand Management across the sustainment enterprise.”
The initiative also uncovered additional savings and benefits to Ford-class carriers beyond NAVSUP.
“We found that there was an engineering change proposal that was no longer needed as the failure modes experienced at commissioning haven’t come to light with run time, so this effort will save the program office funding to allocate toward more prescient needs,” said Couchman.
“The team was able to add a Maintenance Requirements Card (MRC) to enable support that hadn’t seemed possible just by revisiting assumptions. Ford will be able to carry some critical batteries on board coupled with a trickle-charge MRC that previously presented risk of downing a wire on AAG, highlighting the importance of the Integration of End to End Supply Chain partnership under the NSS-Supply framework.”
Within NAVSUP WSS, the EMALS/AAG end-to-end review was not only the first-ever dedicated to the systems, but the first to be firmly entrenched in the NSS-Supply framework. Using this as a launching point, this standardized, repeatable process is the launch point for a recurring, holistic review of all the parts associated with both systems that integrates the NAE sustainment enterprise toward a common vision.
Whether leading from the front in Making Ford Ready, or looking for efficiencies across the enterprise, NSS-Supply seeks to strengthen the Navy’s supply chain to increase readiness and sustain global navy power.
NAVSUP WSS is one of eleven commands under Commander, NAVSUP. Headquartered in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and employing a diverse, worldwide workforce of more than 22,500 military and civilian personnel. NAVSUP's mission is to provide supplies, services, and quality-of-life support to the Navy and joint warfighter. Learn more at www.navsup.navy.mil, www.facebook.com/navsupwss and https://twitter.com/navsupsyscom.
| Date Taken: | 12.04.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 12.04.2020 11:09 |
| Story ID: | 384215 |
| Location: | PHILADELPHIA, PA, US |
| Web Views: | 725 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, NAVSUP WSS leveraging NSS Supply initiative to make Ford ready, by Brian Jones, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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