REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala.— In a push to accelerate the approval of alternative parts in the Army's supply chain, Army Materiel Command hosted an Advanced Manufacturing Parts Qualification Operational Planning Team meeting May 12-14. The OPT brought together leaders and advanced manufacturing subject matter experts from 32 organizations across the Army to analyze and overhaul the current parts qualification process. Reframing the qualification process serves as a foundational step to pursuing supply chain resiliency and enables alternative sources of supply for critical repair parts.
The gathering comes on the heels of the Secretary of the Army designating AMC as the Lead Integrator and Lifecycle Manager for Advanced Manufacturing. With this new mandate, AMC is targeting bureaucratic hurdles and supply chain bottlenecks through reverse engineering, digital twins and accelerating the process to certify advanced manufactured replacement parts.
"This designation is not about ownership of advanced manufacturing, it's about synchronizing capabilities across the Army to mitigating critical risks in our supply chains while enabling materiel readiness," said Rich Martin, AMC executive director for supply chain management. "We must move with a sense of urgency because the qualification process we have right now is preventing us from providing solutions at speed and scale."
Experts from across AMC, Transformation and Training Command, program offices within ASA(ALT) and academia collaborated to streamline parts qualification for ground vehicles, aircraft and other weapon systems. This proposed new process balances the need for speed with the requirement to provide Soldiers with safe and effective replacement parts.
"This event goes beyond parts qualification. We are going to look at how to improve the process for certification, provisioning and configuration control boards, from demand signal to part delivery," said Carolyn Farmer, AMC principal technical advisor. " We are all here because we realize that change and transformation must occur."
The real-world impact of advanced manufacturing on Soldier readiness is already visible at the tactical level. Chief Warrant Officer 5 Kent Shepherd, chief warrant officer of the Ordnance Corps, spoke to attendees about how the Army’s Ordnance School teaches Soldiers across the branch to fabricate alternative parts and get critical equipment off the deadline report.
Shepherd displayed several 3D-printed parts, including a wiring harness cover for an Abrams tank, a component that branches the harness off in two directions. Currently, replacing that single piece requires a lead time of more than a year, sidelining a combat vehicle in the interim.
Ordnance Soldiers recently reverse-engineered the cap and successfully printed it in just one hour at a cost of 73 cents. Shepherd remarked that the ingenuity of Soldiers and localized manufacturing capability resulted in getting an Abrams tank back in the dirt for Soldiers to train on immediately.
"Soldiers want to have the right tools, training, doctrine that supports allied trade personnel and common-sense policy," Shepherd said. “Our Army needs us to get this right."
On the last day of the OPT, attendees presented their implementation plan to senior leaders at AMC, T2COM and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. Their recommendations included eliminating redundant steps, pursuing simultaneous approvals and giving a “fast pass” to low-risk parts.
OPT attendees estimated these changes would accelerate parts qualification by 60%, slashing a backlog that currently exceeds 1,000 days to qualify a part.
Attendees were challenged by the senior leaders to immediately operationalize their new process and prove that their plan can not only reduce the time it takes to certify a 3D-printed replacement part, but also ensure the part is safe and effective for Soldier use.
"We challenged assumptions, we pushed boundaries and we aligned what it truly takes to deliver a solution to this problem," said Dr. Theresa Smith, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for sustainment. "The real work starts now."