What if the Defence organisation had a tool that could identify engineering risk, analyse potential impact of platform design or maintenance changes before they are incorporated and manage configuration through to life of type? And what if that tool, or set of tools, was developed here in Australia?
Such a tool could conceivably allow project offices to compare ‘apples with apples’ when reviewing competing bids and analyse various in-service support models to potentially realise millions, if not billions, of dollars of support cost savings over the service lives of current and future equipment.
PHM Technology, an innovative Melbourne-based SME, has developed the Maintenance Aware Design environment (MADe) product, which is a suite of engineering modelling, analysis and decision support tools for the design and support of mission system/safety critical systems.
MADe is in use with major companies in Australia and overseas and is used on a numbers of programs in the ADF, including the Anzac System Project Office (SPO).
“MADe is a simulation tool that allows you to visualise engineering data and to see what impact changes to the design or the maintenance approach will have. It also effectively captures the knowledge in an organisation,” Chris Stecki, PHM Technology’s chief executive officer explained. “If DMO used the tool across the organisation to build models of a system, it would allow them to become a much smarter customer, in terms of how they manage in-service support contracts.”
‘MOTSA’
Stecki said that slight modification to Military Off The Shelf (MOTS) productions to suit Australian requirements, or the way in which they are used, means divergence from the modelling done by the OEM or DMO using the original technical data.
“We buy MOTS and then we ‘Australianise’ it. I call it MOTSA, we either modify the design slightly, or we use it differently or use it in a different environment,” Stecki said. “And not surprisingly you end up with not as much availability as you would expect, or you spend more money to maintain the required availability. MOTSA is no ‘motza’ for the DMO, because they end up spending more money.”
The major costs of operating legacy platforms are in the sustainment area and configuration management of the maintenance analysis is a time-consuming activity, particularly when the requisite technical data wasn’t purchased at the outset or hasn’t been updated over time.
“Another issue is how well you can effectively capture performance data on your system, what failures you are experiencing and when. I think that gets done reasonably well across Defence, but what doesn’t necessarily get done is the analysis to understand why those failures are occurring,” Stecki said.
“We think that’s one of the key issues we can address, the biggest problem is not a failure in a system but that you don’t identify or understand the risk and put mitigation strategies in place.”
MADe can be used throughout the entire life-cycle of a product, from initial design to in-service support and configuration management.
During design it can be used to identify engineering risks and it is already being used by at least one major defence company to design maintainability and supportability in to their new products during the design phase, thereby reducing through life support costs from the outset.
There are obvious opportunities in the design or early definition phase for using such a tool and during the service life of a platform, MADe can be used to analyse the potential impact of any changes to the design or maintenance procedures, allowing increased safety on the one hand and maintenance procedures to be optimised on the other.
“The root of it all is to understand what the system behaviour is expected to be and, as a consequence, what you have to do to ensure you maintain the availability of that platform in a technically valid and financially appropriate way,” Stecki said. “The majority of the older tools doing this failure and reliability analysis are spreadsheet-based. Spreadsheets capture data, they do not generate knowledge.”
User’s perspective
The Anzac frigate SPO has been using MADe to perform analysis of basic reliability issues and DMS Maritime, part of Serco Systems, has also recently begun using it in support of the patrol boat fleet, providing the capability to conduct the various engineering analyses required for maintenance optimisation in a single tool.
“Because it is simulation based, it means that we can rapidly model the safety, availability and economic consequences of alternate approaches in a cost effective way while ensuring that any solution is technically valid and appropriate,” Serco Systems’ director of engineering David Sippel commented.
PHM Technology has also been collaborating with KPMG to identify ways to leverage their reach and capabilities in the potential implementation of MADe into the broad Defence enterprise, both within the ADF and along the supply chain.
“The main benefit of using MADe is its ability to develop a system wide ‘map’ of potential failure modes and subsequently calculate an optimised list of tests required to detect or control these potential failures. It also has the functionality to develop and optimise maintenance schedules, which in my view are absolutely of value to Defence clients,” Mike Kalms, defence partner with KPMG explained.
“We are interested in assisting PHM Technology to successfully build a business with Defence, and where possible be their change partner enabling Defence and other clients to fully realise the benefits of this technology for their organisation.”
BAE Systems’ Global Access Program (GAP) has also been working with PHM Technology for over two years, looking at potential opportunities across a broad range of its platforms, from surface ships to military vehicles.
“It can take a long time to enter a global supply chain. It simply doesn’t happen overnight but when it does happen, it usually is the beginning of a commercial relationship that will be long lived and deliver enormous benefits to both parties,” GAP general manager Sharon Wilson said.
“Particularly important is PHM’s understanding of the effort and timeframes required to break into a large organisation and how important tenacity and persistence are in this process.”
The future
Chris Stecki says he sees great potential for MADe in several major projects in the foreseeable future, including LHD, AWD and Sea 1000.
“Would using MADe mean the Future Submarine will be substantially different?” he asked. “No, but what it will do is to allow you to consider the implications of Australia-specific concepts of operations, how that affects the reliability of different systems and therefore impact on sustainment.”
LAND 400 is another potential beneficiary of the MADe tool set. “If you are looking at spending $10 billion on building vehicles it would make sense to be able to compare the different designs alternatives before you commit to building one – and then configuration-manage your analyses as you go through the process,” concluded Stecki.
“Because MADe allows you to potentially save money by performing engineering analysis that hasn’t always been done in the past, we think it is an idea whose time has come.”
