CTMA Project #: 140470
Problem: In July 2003, DoD directed that all new solicitations and contracts issues on or after January 1, 2004, require the use of IUID for items meeting established criteria and then in December 2004, the IUID policy was updated to require the application of UID to legacy items (that is, existing property items in inventory and operational use). In this memo, DoD requested all programs and item managers plan to complete this marking by the end of 2010.
IUID marking will require changes to Technical Data Packages (TDP) to identify a marking location and specifications for the mark. The marking location decision requires engineering action for reasons of balance, fatigue resistance, material properties, etc. The Air Force ran a study to determine the cost of a fully manual process to modify TDPs and documented a cost between $3,000 and $5,000. The low hanging fruit would be parts that have nameplates or data plates because the engineering work has already been done in deciding nameplate location. Tools that reduce engineering effort for this process can save hundreds of millions of dollars.
Benefit: A streamlined ECP Process with high cost savings (500 drawings under current system would cost $1.25M (at $2,500 per ECP in recurring cost), streamlined process would cost $125,000, saving $1,125,000. For 60 million parts, Navy would realize a 10:1 savings.
Current provisioning costs 40 work hours/provision, 2,500 provisions per year, with a low estimate of $5M. The streamlined solution cost of $1M would save $4M per year.
Solution/Approach: An Air Force pilot completed in 2010 integrated stitching of multiple frames and raster to vector conversion from the Modernizing Tech Data project; intelligent optical character recognition from the Legacy Lifecycle Data Management project; shape search from the Casting Cost Advisor project; and added the capability of creating an AutoCAD Engineering Change Order (ECO) form with the appropriate IUID marking drawing. The pilot successfully demonstrated a reduction in NRE cost to $350.
This project will repeat the Air Force demonstration using Navy parts and will add additional applications for populating the Navy ICAPS system and will conduct a feasibility study designed to validate the ability of the technology to extract from the JEDMICS system information necessary to populate an Enterprise Data Management System.
Impact on Warfighter: This project will develop and demonstrate a toolset that will reduce non-recurring engineering costs required to add IUID marking locations and specifications to legacy parts, thereby reducing the time needed to achieve complete lifecycle part tracking. Complete lifecycle part tracking is a necessary prerequisite to understanding of deployment environment and optempo effects on reliability. Part reliability is a readiness driver.
DOD Participation:
- U.S. Navy (NAVSEA)
Industry Participation:
- Imaginestics
- NCMS
