U.S. Army LCU 2000 Community Receives $1.5 Million Maintenance Performance Support Tool to Increase Operational Readiness

The United States Army has awarded REI Systems, Inc. a $1.5 million contract to develop a new maintenance-oriented performance support system for the U.S. Army’s Landing Craft Utility (LCU) 2000 platform.

(PRWEB) October 13, 2005 -- The United States Army has awarded REI Systems, Inc. a $1.5 million contract to develop a new maintenance-oriented performance support system for the U.S. Army’s Landing Craft Utility (LCU) 2000 platform. The LCU 2000 is a cargo and combat vehicle transport vessel that is deployed in the waters off of Kuwait, Japan, California, and Fort Eustis, Virginia—-the location where REI Systems will perform most of this contract work.

“The LCU 2000 is an essential logistics platform for supporting our deployed forces in the Persian Gulf,” says Roger LaPlante, MaintenanceMax Performance Support System Program Manager for REI Systems. “Currently, LCU 2000 maintenance technicians rely on a mix of dog-eared paper manuals from different manufacturers to perform fault diagnosis and repair work on LCU 2000 equipment. We will digitize these different reference materials and then use our MaintenanceMax software suite to manage, distribute and, most importantly, display context-specific technical information to technicians as they perform maintenance tasks. Our performance support technology will allow technicians to work faster and with more accuracy while simultaneously ensuring LCU 2000 landing craft are operational when needed.”

The performance support system will provide LCU 2000 maintenance technicians with consolidated access to equipment troubleshooting, maintenance and repair procedures, component diagrams and schematics, and three-dimensional training animations, all delivered on portable rugged computers.

The LCU 2000 community will also use the performance support tool to collect and distribute expert knowledge and process improvement suggestions from senior technicians. This real-world feedback from deployed technicians will provide the life-cycle process improvements necessary to ensure that the technical data maintainers use is always comprehensive, correct, and up-to-date.

“We will be collaborating on the performance support system design with the LCU 2000 experts in the 7th Transportation Group in Fort Eustis,” LaPlante adds. “We involve the maintainers in the software design from the beginning because we want to ensure our performance support system is as helpful and important as any other tool in their toolboxes.”

The performance support system is expected to be completed by summer 2007.

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