Toward an Effective Fleet Management Strategy: Analysis Modeling to Evaluate Alternatives
If effective fleet management is a complex exercise in managing competing priorities, then it is also an exercise in analytics—the scientific process of transforming data into insights for the purpose of making better decisions. A program manager’s challenge is finding the analytic “sweet spot” within analysis data requirements, complexity, flexibility, and speed. Finding that ideal position, to a large extent, hinges on the chosen analytic model’s construct. The wrong construct will yield unrealistic data requirements, as well as undue complexity, thereby limiting understanding and hindering explanation of model dynamics. Inadequate flexibility and speed will yield a model unresponsive to the program manager’s needs for forecasting...
Suggested Reading: “Decision-making in the Public Sector,” INFORMS, October 2019
A consistent and deliberative decision-making process is as important as the outcome itself and is worthy of reflection. This is particularly true in today’s environment, where the quantity of information to consider and the pace and complexity of decisions are increasingly at odds...
Toward an Effective Fleet Management Strategy: The Mental Model
Effectively managing a fleet is an exercise in managing competing priorities. Operators demand availability to meet mission and training requirements and capability necessary to maintain technological relevancy, ensure survivability, and achieve mission effectiveness. Juxtaposed with availability and capability demands is the demand for safety—achieved, in part, through required heavy maintenance. Changing threats, new missions, and fleet age make the competition between these priorities all the more dramatic...
Quantifying a Product Support Strategy’s Impact on Aircraft Availability
Can a recently growing defense budget or maintenance and supply chain initiatives such as CBM+ reverse the trend of lower mission capable rates ? It’s unclear— and that’s the point. Today’s product support managers (PSMs) must have decision-quality information to know the net result of strategies chosen. Until then, a fundamental, overarching question remains invariably unanswered: What is the product support strategy’s quantifiable impact on overall aircraft availability and at what marginal cost?
USAF CBM+ Update: What commercial industry, OEMs and software developers need to know
As CBM+ continues to gain traction in the USAF, it’s important for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), software developers and other industry partners to understand where the USAF is headed in terms of developing toolsets and managing data. Why? Because the USAF has made it evident that it has no appetite for proprietary commercial solutions...
Dayton Aerospace to Host NCMA Profit Analysis and Weighted Guidelines Webinar
The government requires contracting officers to use a “structured approach” for determining the profit or fee objective in most noncompetitive acquisitions requiring cost analysis, but the FAR offers few specifics on how to do this. In this webinar, Dayton Aerospace's Tom Wells discusses the FAR’s requirements, as well as agencies’ standard methodologies.
Major General Dwyer Dennis and Colonel Chris Coombs join Dayton Aerospace board of directors
Major General Dwyer Dennis and Colonel Chris Coombs will join the Dayton Aerospace board of directors as Lieutenant General C.D. Moore and Colonel Wayne Johnson transition to associate status.
Conditioned Based Maintenance Plus (CBM+): Is your program ready?
Since 2002, the Department of Defense (DOD) has viewed Condition-Based Maintenance Plus (CBM+) as a transformational maintenance methodology, capable of improving productivity, shortening maintenance cycles, lowering costs, and increasing availability and reliability through improved business processes and as-it-happens information analysis. CBM+ data analysis methods and prognostic tools allow maintainers to predict issues before they happen, enabling...
Tom Wells Selected as Speaker for NCMA’s 2018 World Congress
Mr. Tom Wells, SES, DAF (Ret), has been selected as a speaker for the National Contract Management Association’s (NCMA) 2018 World Congress. Mr. Wells will discuss commonly used industry proposal management processes and related lessons learned in a workshop scheduled for Monday, July 23, 2018, at 10:30 am. Mr. Wells will also be one of five senior industry and government leaders participating in a main stage discussion...
2018 AA&S Presentation: Airworthiness Risk and MIL-HDBK-516C; Dayton Aerospace Discusses how Industry can Facilitate Successful Certification Efforts
Dayton Aerospace recently presented Airworthiness Risk and MIL-HDBK-516C at the 2018 Aircraft Airworthiness & Sustainment (AA&S) Conference held April 23-26 in Washington, DC. Authored by airworthiness experts, Colonel Wayne Johnson, US Air Force (USAF) (Ret), and Ms. Dawn McGarvey-Buchwalder, former USAF Airworthiness Office branch chief, the presentation discussed lessons learned during industry participation in the USAF airworthiness certification process, with a specific focus on risk and how it is handled during...