Virtual Fleet Support for CAD/PAD: a business systems re-engineering success story

Defense AT&L, May-June, 2005 by Dave Williams, Dale Thomas, Tony Taylor

Sometimes things must work, and that's the case with ejection seats and other emergency systems in military aircraft. Every day, without much thought to their survivability, aviators strap into jets and push the limits, dominating air warfare globally. They know that if necessary, they can eject--and they take great comfort in knowing that even if they lose the jet, they have a high probability of living to fly and fight again.

What does it take to foster such confidence? Thousands of men and women working for the Services, supporting a military-unique product line: Cartridge Actuated Devices/Propellant Actuated Devices (CAD/PADs), energetic devices that employ explosive compositions to provide the power required to position and eject the aircrew in a timed sequence of events, the timing measured in milliseconds.

CAD/PADs are used in aircraft ejection seats, weapons release, and fire suppression systems. The Department of Defense uses about 3,100 different configurations. CAD/PADs, needed for safe flight, can cause the grounding of aircraft if they are defective or past their service life. The CAD/PAD Joint Program manages engineering acquisition for all Services and sustainment for the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. Perishable, like any product--aspirin and other drugs, for example--that depends on chemical mixes, they must be replaced often. Within the Navy and Marine Corps, CAD/PADs generate up to 90,000 supply and maintenance transactions each year, and because of their explosive nature, they must be returned for demilitarization and disposal.

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Historically, the effort to manage the hundreds of thousands of maintenance and supply transactions created a significant burden on sailors and Marines responsible for the paperwork required to order and receive the products, to manage and schedule maintenance, and to replace expiring parts in the aircraft. In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis on implementing smart business practices in the defense community. Virtual Fleet Support (VFS) is a successful initiative of the CAD/PAD Joint Program Office to apply commercial practices and Web technology to streamline many of the formerly labor- and paper-intensive processes associated with sustainment of CAD/PAD.

The Key ... Automation

VFS is a Web-based system for managing the full range of data used by the chain of entities responsible for aircraft sustainment, from the wrench turner on the flightline, to the support system, to the affiliated industrial base. It automates the processes by which sailors and Marines order, report, and track the CAD/PAD and by which they obtain safety information and training. In essence the system:

* Automates the business practices linking the flightline aircraft maintainers, ordnance logistics and supply systems, and the fleet support team in the Joint Program Office

* Moves users from administrative tasks to mission tasks

* Ensures data are input once only--at the source--then are used by all

* Employs safety, logistics, engineering, acquisition, maintenance, and supply data within a single automated life cycle support process

* Automates supply ordering using fleet maintenance data, eliminating fleet requisitioning

* Completes work for the fleet maintainers, instead of workloading them.

Achieving these goals has resulted in automated business processes and elimination of paperwork, such as archaic naval messages, and it has made possible the concept of data as a corporate asset, available to all in real time.

The Old Way

Before VFS, the Navy CAD/PAD Program at Indian Head, Md., relied on an intranet to carry out various technical, logistics, and program functions. A central database held key data affecting the sustainment of CAD/PAD. The system successfully facilitated several centralized responsibilities, such as budgeting and procurement of replacement items. But it had a significant limitation. Those outside the program office had to come through the program office to input or receive data. Users at the 780 Navy maintenance activities worldwide sent a diskette each month with tracking information on installed CAD/PAD--a cumbersome process that, at best, produced central information that was constantly out of date. And in some cases, sources maintained costly and inefficient redundant data.

The old system did have some significant successes. One was automation of the requirements determination process using data showing when every CAD/PAD must be replaced. The result was greatly improved accuracy of procurement requirements and a definitive basis for budget justification. With this tool, the program office was able to justify its budget by identifying specific aircraft that would be grounded if cuts were made to the procurement request. This capability has been incorporated in VFS.

The New Paradigm

The previous focus was on collecting data for use by the CAD/PAD program and its chain of command. VFS shifts to managing corporate data for the primary user, the fleet maintainer, and to automating business practices using the data. Each authorized user is able to input directly to the central system. Validation and security routines have been built in to avoid corruption.