CTMA Project #: 141022
Problem: With near historically low unemployment rates, it is increasingly challenging to retain high-quality highly-skilled personnel in today’s manufacturing, maintenance and sustainment industries. Industry data estimates show that for every ten technicians retiring, only two are coming into the industry. While the challenge to recruit and retain high-quality maintainers is prevalent in private industry, this issue also plagues the Department of Defense (DoD). U.S. Marine Corps maintenance and readiness activities are equally affected. Demand in commercial markets makes qualified maintenance Marines among the hardest to retain, particularly those who specialize in the heavy equipment (diesel) and aviation maintenance fields.
Benefit: Exploring technology tools that can harness data relevant to maintenance and sustainment manpower capability and capacity will improve industry competitiveness in the global market, by ensuring a highly skilled and technical workforce remains current and relevant.
Solution/Approach: This project will use cognitive computing technologies to analyze enterprise data to uncover relevant relationships and metrics and create a manpower retention dashboard and decision tool to assist maintenance and sustainment leadership with capacity, operational and throughput decisions. The pilot project team will develop tools that demonstrate the capability to identify, forecast, and predict key retention factors for aircraft maintenance personnel.
Impact on Warfighter:
- Improve recruitment and retention of critical maintenance manpower
- Enhance warfighter readiness
- Lower overall costs
DOD Participation:
- U.S. Marine Corps
- U.S. Navy
Industry Participation:
- Strategic Resilience Group LLC
- IBM
- NCMS
Benefit Area(s):
- Cost savings
- Safety
- Maintenance management improvement
- Improved readiness
- Reliability improvement
Focus Area:
- Business IT and analytics
