April 2008

Welcome to The CTMA Connector, a monthly newsletter designed to provide news and ideas about the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) program. The CTMA program is a joint Department of Defense/National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (DoD/NCMS) effort promoting collaborative technology development between industry and the DoD maintenance and repair facilities. This newsletter highlights ongoing projects, serves as a forum for promoting new project ideas, and provides other news of interest to the program. Our goal is to stimulate your participation and solicit your input. Feel free to submit items for the newsletter as well as any suggestions to make it more useful. More information about the program can be found at http://ctma.ncms.org/. To subscribe or unsubscribe to the CTMA Connector, send a message to listserv@listserv.ncms.org with "subscribe CTMANewsletter" or "unsubscribe CTMANewsletter" in the message body.

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We welcome the following new members into NCMS:

Intelli-Check - Mobilisa, Inc. (www.icmobil.com)

Intelli-Check – Mobilisa provides a total package security system for access control to protect airports, government and commercial buildings, military installations and other critical sites as well as for first responder initiatives.  In addition, the company is the leading innovator of Wireless Over Water technologies, providing secure and efficient communication in a marine environment.

Analex Corporation (www.analex.com)

Analex Corporation is a leading provider of mission-critical professional services to federal government clients.

 

 

2008 Annual CTMA Working Symposium

"Call to Collaborate"

April 7 - 9

Baltimore Marriott Inner Harbor at Camden Yards

The CTMA Program held its 9th annual symposium April 7-9, 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland. Administered by the NCMS, the CTMA program is a unique DoD/Industry partnership designed to bring new technologies to the DoD maintenance community to increase readiness through increased reliability, improved maintenance procedures, and reduced costs.  “The CTMA Symposium highlights the successful collaboration between NCMS and the Department of Defense,” said NCMS President & CEO Richard Jarman.  “NCMS works closely with the DoD to identify essential technologies that could ultimately improve readiness, reduce costs and enhance the efficiency of its weapon systems.  These efforts have been recognized with six Defense Manufacturing Excellence Awards and most importantly have increased the materiel readiness of our warfighters.”

At this year’s symposium, keynote speaker Major General James H. Pillsbury, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, G-3/5, U.S. Army Materiel Command emphasized the importance of Condition Based Maintenance (CBM+) for increasing weapon system readiness and reliability while decreasing the maintenance burden on the soldier. Rear Admiral Mark A. Hugel, Deputy Commander Logistics, Maintenance and Industrial Operations, Naval Sea Systems Command, U.S. Navy provided the attendees with a better perspective for the Navy’s technology insertion program and how the CTMA program can assist the Navy.

Many companies presented their new technologies during an evening table top reception.  “This opportunity was particularly valuable to small and medium-sized companies who normally may not have access to customers within the DoD” said Randy Kirk, President & CEO, Aspire Solutions, Inc.  

Over 30 project teams presented their progress to date in providing the DoD with new technologies to greatly improve manufacturing and repair processes that enable faster and better repair at less cost and ultimately increase materiel readiness. To date, the CTMA program has made a significant impact to DoD with an annual cost savings over $130 million with an average return on investment by the projects of 20:1. A significant number of new projects were identified and will be evaluated by the CTMA Review Team for future funding.

We would also like to thanks our sponsors for helping make the Symposium a success:
New Project Approval:  In-Field Fluid Analysis

DoD Participants: Joint Oil Analysis Program; US Marine Corps PM-LAV; US Army TARDEC; US Navy - NAVAIR; US Army AMCOM; Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center; US Marine Corps PM-AAA; US Army PEO Aviation

As part of a condition-based maintenance program (CBM), performing oil changes based upon oil quality helps keep equipment in optimal condition and eliminates waste. Current technology largely involves collecting and shipping samples to centralized laboratories and awaiting results before taking maintenance action. Sometimes subsequent samples are taken before the original samples are analyzed, making the results of the original samples meaningless. Even though field laboratories have been developed for in-theater use, they are costly and cumbersome to transport and sustain. The shipping and delay costs are even higher when offsite laboratories are used for large global regions.

With over 250,000 ground vehicles alone to service, the Army’s current practice of manually sampling oil from these vehicles at time or service-based intervals, sending the samples to the laboratory, and reporting the results back to fleet maintainers is onerous. Compounding this scenario is the fact that over 90% of oil samples come back healthy and indicate no further action required on the vehicle. Relatedly, the Chief of Staff of the Army has initiated the Army Transformation Roadmap which indicates the need for embedded prognostics in oil analysis systems and the application of CBM practices in the care of vehicle fleets.

For these reasons, a better solution would be portable, hand-held analytical tools providing a lab-quality assessment suitable for real-time in-field use. The ideal device will give a soldier or mechanic the ability to determine oil quality on a real-time basis before or during a mission without messy and time-consuming sampling. The device would use the quantity of oil available from wiping the dipstick to perform a rapid screening test and immediately report the results in terms of a recommendation to change or keep the oil. Decentralizing oil testing will empower the field personnel to make informed decisions rather than waiting for a laboratory report. Furthermore, it eliminates the logistics trail associated with the shipment of samples.  Development of a high-quality, simple to operate, on-site fluid analyzers will empower warfighters with the ability to assess oil quality in real-time at the physical location of the weapon system.  With full implementation of an in-field fluid analyzer, the Army could expect to realize a significant cost avoidance on aviation asset testing and could expect to eliminate much of its landcraft laboratory analyses.


The NCMS contact is Debbie Lilu, debral@ncms.org, 734-995-7038.

 

Participants needed on New Project Ideas:  Submit and view project ideas at http://ctmaideas.ncms.org.  Add your comments to new project ideas and indicate your interest in helping to define and participate in the project.

We now have over 70 new project ideas submitted for the CTMA program.  These projects are all being reviewed with the individual services in order to seek funding to augment the 2008 CTMA funding directed by Congress.  Keep the ideas coming, because they also serve to illustrate the tremendous need for new technologies to increase weapon systems readiness.

We appreciate your feedback. Please contact Chuck Ryan with suggestions or input on other topics that would be of interest to you in this newsletter. The CTMA Program is sponsored by the Department of Defense; the content of this newsletter does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the government; no official endorsement should be inferred.