Trend analysis of required work not completed during surface ship availabilities

Abstract

The Ship Maintenance Program is designed to keep ships at the highest level of material condition practicable and to provide reasonable assurance that they will be available for operations to the fleet commanders. When the total cost of work required exceeds the level of funding for a maintenance availability, some of the work must be deferred. In this thesis the maintenance records available were examined to determine if trends exist in the type of work that is not being completed. Trends were established by comparing the required work items for ships prior to entering an availability to the records of jobs completed in the availability. Trends in certain categories, like engineering or habitability, may be factors that impact retention, environmental protection or other concerns facing the Navy. Further, the data for surface ship maintenance were assessed. This study found that data support the idea that a significant portion of work items pertaining to general categories of habitability (31 percent), weapons systems (23.1 percent) and electronics (18.1 percent) have been deferred for LPD availabilities between 1993 and 1998. The least deferred maintenance occurred in main propulsion (4.8 percent) and the electric plants (10.2 percent). This study was unable to identify any place where comprehensive historical data for surface ship maintenance availabilities are maintained