Is Electronic Life-Cycle Tracking of Aircraft Parts Degrading Readiness?
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Authors
Henzler, Eric
Williams, Mark
Subjects
NALCOMIS
Life-Cycle Tracking
DMAIC
Six Sigma
Aircraft Readiness
Life-Cycle Tracking
DMAIC
Six Sigma
Aircraft Readiness
Advisors
Hudgens, Bryan
Ferrer, Geraldo
Date of Issue
2013-12-04
Date
Publisher
Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School
Language
Abstract
The Naval Aviation Logistics Command Managed Information System (NALCOMIS), the current Navy and Marine Corps electronic tracking system for aircraft components, provides complete, up-to-date life-cycle information about aircraft and associated components to all maintenance agencies across the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE). By design, the system is meant to facilitate efficient receipt, repair, documentation, and transfer of all aircraft and components inducted into the maintenance cycle. However, many end users within the NAE still receive a significant volume of aircraft and associated components from higher echelon maintenance activities without current electronic life-cycle records entered in NALCOMIS. Consequently, components cannot be certified as ready for issue and utilized to revive non-mission-capable aircraft into full mission capable status. As a result, the Navy and Marine Corps incur significant costs, including decreased availability of air assets, degraded operational readiness, early retirement of aircraft components, and inefficient utilization of aviation maintenance administrative personnel. This report applies the Six Sigma define, measure, analyze, improve, and control process approach to evaluate current procedures across the entire maintenance cycle and includes analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data in order to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Recommendations are focused on cost reductions through overall process improvement and seek to minimize personnel-hour expenditures whereby aircraft availability and operational readiness can be increased.
Type
Technical Report
Description
Series/Report No
Department
Organization
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
NPS-LM-13-097
Sponsors
Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program
Funder
Format
Citation
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.