Implementing the UID policy: the CH-47 approach to parts marking - Lessons Learned

Defense AT&L, Jan-Feb, 2004 by William T. "Tim" Crosby, Fred C. "Chris" Sautter

Over the past several years, the Cargo Helicopter Program Management Office (PMO) has been actively developing a life cycle management capability within the CH-47 Chinook fleet. This effort has been in response to the DoD 5000 requirement, which states that PMOs will be the total life cycle managers for their weapon systems. In the Cargo PMO, we expanded the guidance to focus all our efforts on reducing the burden on our soldiers. Thus we have named our logistics transformation effort "soldier-focused logistics" (SFL). To that end, our program consisted of adopting a fleet wide automatic information system (AIS) that would allow us to manage with the "power of facts." One of the key enablers for this AIS was the ability to interface with Automated Identification Technology (AIT) to provide error-free documentation of our aircraft and components across the fleet.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This article documents the path taken and the lessons learned by the Cargo PMO over the past several years in laying the groundwork for a parts-marking program, which is a key and essential part of our fleet management efforts. We will take you through the various steps leading to a proof of principle [Editor's note: proof of principle is an engineering term describing areas of technical stretch in a design] where we brought all the parts of the program together to demonstrate a seamless, end-to-end data solution. This capability has provided the warfighter with an effective tool for fleet management while at the same time, it has directly answered the guidance of the current UID policy to provide "intelligent data" to the Department of Defense (DoD) financial managers.

Cargo PMO Approach

When the Cargo PMO initiated its total life cycle management efforts several years ago, there was no one within the PMO or Army Aviation who had not recognized the common problem. We were a large organization with virtually no financial understanding of what we owned or what it cost us to maintain that extensive inventory because numerous agencies were tracking metrics without synchronization. Accentuating the problem was the realization that the commercial sector had long ago solved these same issues. This was dramatically illustrated each time we went through a checkout line in our local grocery store or Wal-Mart: not only did they have the processes in place to provide us with our bill automatically, but they understood the impact our shopping cart had on their inventory and need to re-order. With a mindset focused on change, we launched a program to totally revamp the way we were doing business within the Cargo PMO.

Requirement: Process Change

A new management system enabled through AIT and parts marking could not be implemented without major process re-engineering. While a bar code affixed to an item might seem to be an easy solution for identification, the implementation of this "new" capability within our existing acquisition and information systems required new thinking and new processes. Changes were required in government tech data, vendor and OEM engineering drawings, contract language, and--most important--our information systems. All our legacy processes required modification to accept this new form of data and provide it to the enterprise in a seamless fashion.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In order to address these issues, we took a focused approach to parts marking that included the following:

* Understanding how to mark parts and the costs of those marks;

* Defining the automated environment for this new information system;

* Obtaining a new AIS with the ability to deal with seamless data collection across the enterprise;

* Demonstrating through a proof of principal, the necessary process changes that were required to adopt this new effort.

Part Marking: Methodology and Costs

The first step along the path was to determine exactly the cost and effort to mark parts. While these requirements can be covered in contractual language for a development program, they can be an extremely expensive proposition for legacy weapon systems. As an example, a "simple requirement" imposed on our OEM to change a drawing can incur cost--anywhere from 40 to 80 billable hours. This single factor made previous efforts at legacy parts-marking programs prohibitively expensive. Because our fleet management effort required parts marking as a key enabler, another solution was necessary. We turned to the best commercial practices of the aviation sector, which had previously resolved this issue. Through a close working relationship among manufacturers, operators, and the FAA, process changes were adopted that reduced the billable hour requirements in most cases to less then 4 hours per part number.

Other issues that needed to be addressed before we could fully understand the cost of parts marking of a legacy weapon system were:

* At what physical location (depot, flight line) can parts be marked?

* Where do you place machine-readable code on parts?

* What techniques are required to create part marks for each family of parts?