SHIPMAIN - reengineering for a culture of readiness

Sea Power, Sep 2003 by LaFleur, Timothy W, Balisle, Phillip M

SHIPMAIN Summary

* Ship maintenance must be more responsive to surge deployments.

* Redundancies in maintenance processes among organizations must be eliminated.

* SHIPMAIN gives the flexibility to support continuous maintenance aboard ship.

Operation Iraqi Freedom featured the largest naval deployment in recent history, with more than 70 percent of our surface ships and 50 percent of our submarines underway. This force included seven carrier strike groups, three amphibious readiness groups, two amphibious task forces, and more than 77,000 Sailors.

Some ships, such as the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, were deployed for 10 months-the longest deployments since the Vietnam War. Earlier this year, numerous ships rapidly deployed on short notice to support the buildup of forces in the Arabian Gulf.

All of this did not just "happen." These successes are the result of a strong industrial base-effective standardized processes at shipyards, record-setting availability, a skilled workforce, and strong public-private partnerships-along with initiatives such as distance support.

But, as effective as our maintenance base has been, it needs to be more efficient. Maintenance processes vary from homeport to homeport. One source of inefficiency is a lack of adherence to established ship repair planning milestones. Any task that is added late to a work package can increase the cost of providing the proper number and skills of people required to perform the work. Adding work often also increases the cost of materials, because they cost more when they must be obtained in a hurry.

Inefficiencies also arise when those providing maintenance do not have a steady workload but instead experience peaks and valleys. In addition, there is an opportunity for miscommunication, ultimately translating into higher costs, whenever there is a handoff between someone planning the work to someone doing it.

And yet, by working around problems and through old-fashioned deckplate and waterfront ingenuity, we got the job done.

This worked for us once, when we fought a predictable enemy using a predictable set of forces on a predictable schedule. Today's enemy in the war on terrorism is unpredictable. We can no longer afford the cookie-cutter approach to fleet deployments. Instead, we must create a more responsive force that can handle deployment surges to respond to world events as needed.

To achieve this, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) is laying out the Fleet Response Concept. This plan is critical as the Navy builds what the CNO calls a "culture of readiness." Building this culture requires a system that accomplishes both maintenance and modernization, at the same time preserving quality, achieving promised schedules, and reducing costs-in other words, a maintenance system that is both effective and efficient.

To instill this culture, the Navy is implementing a family of maintenance initiatives that includes "one shipyard for the nation," waterfront integration, and a new concept called SHIPMAIN.

In the fall of 2002, we launched SHIPMAIN to examine the planning processes for surface ship maintenance from the point where a ship's force first identifies the work through the point when we start turning the wrenches.

Finding inefficiencies and streamlining are certainly nothing new, so what's different about SHIPMAIN? Earlier maintenance initiatives focused on improving performance within individual organizations. However, SHIPMAIN recognizes that there are also redundancies in maintenance processes among organizations. Its goal is to examine and eliminate them.

Take the 2-kilo OPNAV Form 4790/2K, for example. Fireman Jones, aboard the hypothetical USS Haze Gray, discovers a piece of equipment that needs repair, fills out a 2-kilo with its maze of data fields and codes, and submits it to the Current Ship's Maintenance Projects database. It is sent from the ship to the Regional Support Group, where the port engineer screens the request, then hands it off to the type desk representative, who determines whether a validation assist visit to the ship is necessary. If it is, the type desk hands the 2-kilo off to the fleet technical support center, who surveys the equipment and makes a recommendation back to the type desk.

A typical 2-kilo can take up to a week to process before someone actually turns a wrench to repair the equipment. And if the ship is up against operational deadlines, a commanding officer might submit a casualty report to get the equipment repaired before the ship gets underway, increasing the cost of the work being performed.

This means both wasted time and extra money that the Navy can no longer afford. To help us identify these inefficiencies, we have enlisted the help of the Thomas Group, a prominent consulting firm of process efficiency experts who helped the naval aviation community improve processes for pilot training and inter-deployment readiness. With these consultants' help, we have established the following goals: Install a common planning process for surface ship maintenance and alterations; increase the efficiency of the process without compromising its effectiveness; install a disciplined management process with objective measurements; and institutionalize the process and a continuous improvement method.