Casting Knowledge Reuse-Based Cost Advisor – Phase I

DoD Participant:  U.S. Air Force – Ogden Air Logistics Center; Defense Logistics Agency – Richmond

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. This project was funded in part by the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) through the Commercial Technology for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) program at the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS). Based on the scope of Phase I of the project, the system can currently handle aluminum alloy cast parts made using the investment casting process. The system has been validated using actual cast parts from Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control and from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). Preliminary test results show that defense maintenance and procurement agencies, and defense contractors will benefit through the use of this system and significant benefit will be obtained through further expansion of the scope of the system.

Purpose

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 potential price gouging. The purpose for developing the CCAS is to help these defense agencies in their efforts by enabling reduction of purchasing cycle times and costs by providing users with “should” cost estimates, information on alternative processes, and list of North American suppliers whose capabilities match with that of the part design criteria.

Studies through this CTMA Casting Knowledge Reuse-Based Cost Advisor – Phase I project revealed that one of the major reasons for increased costs and procurement cycle time for legacy parts was because procurement specifications for legacy parts were based on manufacturing capabilities at the time that these parts were produced. Many alternative processes have evolved with advances in technology that are more cost efficient with shorter lead times. These processes are often overlooked. Making the procurement agency aware of these alternative processes will allow the defense agencies to fully utilize their supplier base, lower costs, and reduce lead times.

There is an urgent need for a knowledge-based system that incorporates a “Process Advisor” and a “Cost Advisor” that can help procurement and maintenance personnel not only to identify alternative processes for legacy parts but also enable them to estimate in real time the “should costs” of parts based on the design criteria and process selected. Such a knowledge-based tool would also be relevant for maintenance of current and future systems as it would have the capability to incorporate updates in newer manufacturing techniques and costs. No such solution is commercially available for near net shape processes such as castings because of the complexities involved in correlating design features to manufacturing process drivers and material properties. Determining “should” cost is difficult as most of the expertise and knowledge of such processes resides with the suppliers and is often proprietary and not easily available. Manufacturing process selections are cost drivers for processes like castings. These processes vary from industry to industry creating a key technical challenge for such a knowledge-based tool. This knowledge-based tool has to be flexible to incorporate these diverse sources of industry data and provide advice tailored to that industry segment.

The DoD has recognized the need for such an advanced advisory system and has made the development of such a system tailored to the defense agencies its priority.

Main Findings

The key findings from the project were that development of such a system would not only benefit the defense procurement and maintenance agencies but would also significantly benefit defense contractors during new product development by assisting in the creation of a more efficient part design. The system would allow designers involved in development of cast parts, for defense aerospace components, to understand the impact of their design decisions on “should” cost. The system would also allow the designer to conduct “what-if” analyses to come up with the most cost efficient design. Currently a majority of young and inexperienced designers do not have a good understanding of manufacturing processes and which design parameters contribute to production cost. With the aerospace sector predicted to lose a significant portion of its personnel in the coming five years, a substantial amount of manufacturing knowledge will be lost. Currently there is no knowledge-based tool in existence that would enable the transfer of this lost knowledge to younger designers and engineers. The CCAS, with its flexible database architecture, has the ability to incorporate this knowledge and ensure a significant portion of the past knowledge will be transferred to the younger engineers and designers.

Outcome/Results

This project was focused on the development of a system that is currently specific to the defense aerospace sector allowing maintenance depots, logistics, and procurement agencies to tackle the growing problems of increased lead time and costs for procurement of parts for current and aging systems. The CCAS, developed under this collaborative project, utilizes Imaginestics’ Intelligent Dynamic Engineering Advisory System (IDEAS) technology that was developed under an National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant. This system incorporates casting knowledge provided by H.A. Burrow Pattern Works and the American Foundry Society, Inc. The system was developed to handle aluminum alloy cast parts made using the investment casting process based on the project scope defined for Phase I. Phase I was meant to prove that such a system could be developed using the IDEAS technology for the defense sector. The system developed in this project can handle inputs from 2D legacy prints or 3D computer-aided design (CAD) systems. For parts created in 3D, the system enables automatic extraction of design criteria and shape complexity to be used as inputs for the advisory system. For aging systems, where a majority of the parts are in raster 2D prints, an interactive user interface has been developed to allow entry of important data needed for arriving at “should” costs.

The system was validated using over 80 aluminum alloy investment cast parts from Lockheed Martin Missile and Fire Control. Lockheed then compared the “should” cost estimates from the CCAS for the parts to the “actual” procurement costs for the parts adjusted for 2008 dollars. The prototype software used only the 3D model of the part and basic information about the quantity and class and grade. The correlation between the actual procurement costs and the predicted cost from the prototype was around 82%, proving the capability of the system to accurately predict costs when dealing with parts of various complexities.

Benefits

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.

Further development of the technology behind the CCAS to include other casting processes, forgings and machining would significantly increase the costs savings.

The CCAS was also evaluated by Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control to understand benefits for defense contractors. A key benefit of the CCAS is to enable designers to recognize cost drivers early in the design and conduct “what-if” analyses. This would reduce the number of design changes after release assisting in keeping projects on time and within budget. Each change to the drawing can cost as much as $5,000. Reducing drawing changes could save as much as $100K annually. If the design is not changed before the drawing is sent to the casting vendor, the cost of the casting would be higher than required due to mold changes and scrap parts produced to a design that could not be produced. An important aspect of the CCAS would be providing defense original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) the impetus to design more castings. Lockheed has indicated that they tend not to use castings because they haven’t had good cost data to justify use of castings up front leading to the use of more machined parts. Greater use of castings could result in more savings for their customer. Lockheed also identified significant use for the CCAS for their procurement use as a “should” cost tool to compare with actual quotes, which can be a springboard for discussion to cost step-downs from the supplier. This often leads to the identity of cost drivers that will lead to cost reductions if a feature is eliminated or modified. An annual savings to Lockheed and their customer could also be as much as $154K on top of the $100K mentioned earlier based on performing producibility “what-ifs” on design options prior to placing an order for casting.

It is evident, from the benefits showcased with the DLA and Lockheed that further development of the technologies behind the CCAS should be extended to other manufacturing processes. This will significantly benefit not only the defense procurement, maintenance agencies and defense contractors, but companies in other industrial sectors such as automotive, agricultural equip­ment, etc. For companies in the automotive sector such as Ford Motor Company, the software when extended to other casting and manufacturing processes can help realize significant savings in design, purchasing and part estimation. As indicated by Ford, given that each part number is produced in thousands and often in millions, even a dollar saving for a cast part could result in several million dollars worth of savings.