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.

•

Will you be at the DMSMS 2008 next week? If so, join us in the CTMA sponsored working session for "Standardization for Rapid Manufacturing Technologies", on Thursday afternoon, 25 September.

This Breakout Session will be the first working session exploring the issues associated with approvals of new revolutionary production processes within the DoD Standardization program, and the creation of an official working group working toward acceptance of new processes such as ADF-RP technologies otherwise known as Rapid Manufacturing technologies as alternative production solutions for obsolescent parts and diminishing manufacturing. Whereas the focus will be on cast parts, the same methodology is expected to be extended to other manufacturing processes.

Issues to be discussed include:

• DoD – Industry – Other Government examination of the standardization and qualification needs for Rapid Manufacturing (RM) processes and RM produced parts to replace obsolescent or unavailable parts and tooling

– Diminishing manufacturing has created readiness-voids posing serious maintenance issues

– How fast can we close those voids?

• Initiate a cross DoD – Industry working group to facilitate standardization of RM produced parts / processes / materials

– Launch Official DoD Standardization Program Effort

– DoD specific or NGS, what is the best tactical course of action?

– Working Group formation

Conference information and registration can be found at: http://www.dmsms2008.com/index.html

Questions about the session should be directed to Connie Philips, conniep@ncms.org.

Project Completion: Casting Cost Advisor

Defense procurement, maintenance agencies, and contractors are faced with the growing challenge of maintaining aging and current weapon systems. They are tasked with ensuring their mission readiness to meet various global commitments while reducing procurement costs. Furthermore, due to parts obsolescence and a dramatic reduction in the supplier base for such legacy parts, the defense agencies are reliant on a handful of suppliers to meet their requirements which leaves them susceptible to long procurement time and higher prices. An intelligent and dynamic Casting Cost Advisory System (CCAS) that provides users with real-time advice on the selection of optimal casting processes and “should costs” based on part design criteria was successfully developed in this project.

A preliminary test of the CCAS using parts provided by the DLA showed that the CCAS could help lower procurement cost by over 25%. This enables the DLA to benchmark procurement costs for a part using that price point to negotiate a lower cost for the part in the future. Based on an analysis provided by the DLA, a 5% savings per item would allow the DLA to save over $111K per year for just 5 National Stock Numbers (NSNs) with the purchase of 7 items per NSN. There is a real potential of 25% savings using the CCAS that would enable the DLA to save over $500K for the same number of NSNs and items purchased per NSN.

The CCAS project was focused just on one casting process out of several, that being investment castings. There are numerous other processes to which the casting cost advisor has the potential to be applicable to and therefore to save DLA money by identifying a better more reasonable estimate of manufacturing cost of the cast parts and hopefully in the future forged parts. At DSCR, within their database of confirmed cast and forged parts for the aviation supply chain, they identified ~325 investment cast parts to which the casting cost advisor is currently applicable. But if the casting cost advisor were expanded to other cast and forged processes, then it would applicable to over 6,800 parts that are in their database of parts with known cast and/or forged content. Plus that database is ever expanding and is only concerned with those items in the Aviation Supply Chain. There are several other supply chains that the CCAS could potentially be applicable, such as the Land and Maritime Supply Chains. Looking at just those in the three supply chains within those managed by the DLA there are a potential of ~80,000 parts that may have cast and/or forged content. Therefore, once the CCAS has expanded it's capability to estimate cost for all cast and forged processes then it may be applicable to many more parts that are managed by the DLA, with the maximum being the neighborhood of ~80,000 parts. With an estimated savings of $1,050 per item, total cost savings to DLA could reach $84M.

The NCMS contact is Steve Hale, steveh@ncms.org, 734-995-2195.

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 100 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. DoD staff - keep an eye out for opportunities to apply year-end funds to the CTMA program.

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.