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October 31, 2008
ETS 2006 - Engineering Ships for an Affordable, Integrated Force
Reverse Distance Support: Fleet Experience for At Sea Operations
ABSTRACT
Increased ship operation tempos and longer deployments have forced the shore-side maintenance planners to become innovative in planning and executing ship maintenance efforts. COMNAVSURFLANT has been specifically searching for a cost effective and technically feasible process to continuously monitor shipboard machinery maintenance needs while ships are pier-side or deployed. This would allow for planning efforts to occur in real time and always be up to date with respect to actual machinery condition, support the deployment resulting in reduced machinery failures during deployment and reduce onsite troubleshooting and assessment efforts and the associated costs. Working together toward these goals, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWCCD), Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center (MARMC), and COMNAVSURFLANT were able to develop and deploy a process to conduct HM&ERA assessment procedures remotely utilizing actual machinery data and failure algorithms. This eliminated the need to have a MARMC team come onboard the ship and have the crew operate machinery to conduct assessment procedures. This process was first applied successfully to pier-side HM&ERA machinery assessments. COMNAVSURFLANT then requested MARMC and NSWCCD apply the process to remotely monitor gas turbines on selected ships of the GEORGE WASHINGTON STRIKE GROUP (GWSG) during deployment. The process developed is the reverse of Distance Support, where the deployed ship requests support, instead providing proactive maintenance recommendations to the deployed ship based on actual and projected machinery operating conditions, hence the term Reverse Distance Support (RDS). The goals were to eliminate all gas turbine CASREPS, reduce on site tech assists and understand the practicalities involved with providing remote monitoring capability. This paper will report the results and lessons learned of the GWSG RDS experiment as well as provide a glimpse on how this process is being further implemented at MARMC and SWRMC and will meet the requirements for future sea-basing operational requirements. Cost and return-on-investment projections will be presented and discussed.
Ken Krooner
ESRG, LLC
Dale Hirschman
Fleet Forces Command
Kurt Jarchow
Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center
Download the full PDF:: RDSfleetexperience.pdf
