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Shared Experiences of Implementing Lifecycle Management Concepts
February 16th, 2009 | Total Lifecycle Systems Management | Posted by Thomas Murphy
Realizing effective Total Life Cycle Systems Management (TLCSM) will involve both significant technical and cultural change. It will require a combination of sustained policy and process improvements, aggressive engineering and logistics workforce development. In addition, appropriate interoperable tools, technologies and environments must support and enable several key concepts simultaneously, including:
- Collaborative Systems Engineering
- Iterative/Spiral Design
- Systems Operational Effectiveness (SOE)
- Design for Supportability
- The new Life Cycle Logistics Flow
Added to these concepts is the complexity of “design” trades that involve accurate Weapon System Configuration, System Performance, System Operational Availability (Ao)/Readiness, Process Efficiency and Life Cycle Cost.
Please share your experiences or knowledge of specific programs, case studies, pilots & prototypes that have been successfully (or unsuccessfully) implemented or institutionalized the concepts described above.
Institutionalizing Lifecycle Management
February 9th, 2009 | Total Lifecycle Systems Management | Posted by Thomas Murphy
On 2 December 2008, the Honorable John Young, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics USD (AT&L) approved its first major revision in five years to the DoD Acquisition System (DoD Instruction 5000. 02). This revision reflects the department’s determination to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its enterprise-wide acquisition business processes so it can cost effectively continue to provide warfighters with the best weapons systems and support in the world.
This new policy guidance follows several recent OSD policy initiatives, including “Implementing a Life Cycle Management Framework, Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) Policy” and the formation of a Product Support Assessment Team. These intensified the department’s focus on the concept of Total Life Cycle Systems Management (TLCSM) in which designing in the right amounts of RAM into our systems/equipment and using Performance-Based Logistics concepts are both critical to achieving Affordable Operational Effectiveness.
What is your opinion on the new DoD 5000 Policy guidance? Will it accelerate the institutionalization of the Life Cycle Management vision so we can realistically afford the development and fielding of new weapon system capabilities?
PLM: The Critical Link between Product Data and ERP
January 29th, 2009 | Total Lifecycle Systems Management | Posted by Thomas Murphy
The following is a paragraph from a recently published OSD White Paper entitled “Product Lifecycle Management: The Critical Link Between Product Data and Operational Readiness”
One of the greatest failings in the DoD’s investment in ERP environments to-date has been the lack of corresponding investment in product data management. Other than simple financial transaction management, it is virtually impossible to leverage the other capabilities of an ERP in the absence of authoritative product data (i.e. knowing “what’s in the box”). A simple representative example of this would be forecasting spares inventory requirements against demand. If one has no visibility into the actual configuration of assets that are manufactured, delivered and remanufactured over long time horizons (via managed, structured bills of material), it’s impossible to determine how much of what will be needed. Another example would be inserting new technology into an existing hardware platform. Without the fidelity provided by an actively managed product data repository and visibility into the asset base, determining which assets to upgrade, estimate cost of upgrade and project planning are problematic at best. There are hundreds of examples of inefficiency associated with this information gap within DoD and it should be obvious why this capability should be considered to be a core foundation competency.
Do you agree or disagree with the DoD’s analysis of the problem? Please provide relevant examples.
Conversation, insights and experiences
January 28th, 2009 | Total Lifecycle Systems Management | Posted by Thomas Murphy
Welcome to the Defense News Best Practices Forum. For the next three months, subject matter experts from PTC will be highlighting topics relating to Total Lifecycle Systems Management and other A&D industry trends. The goal is to foster peer-to-peer dialog among industry leaders and collaboration across DoD communities and organizations that might not traditionally engage in these types of dialog.
We encourage you to join the conversation, share your insights and experiences, and raise any questions you might have. In the interest of developing as open a discussion as possible, we’d ask that you include your name, organization and other relevant details when you submit your comments.
We look forward to insightful discussions in the weeks ahead and hope that you’ll join us each week as new topics are introduced.