U.S. Navy E-2C Maintenance Community Validates Performance Support Technology Can Cut Costs and Reduce Aircraft Cannibalizations

The U.S. Navy E-2C “Hawkeye” aircraft community completed a pilot test of the MaintenanceMax™ performance support system (PSS) for AN/APS-145 radar transmitter maintenance and found that the PSS reduced troubleshooting time by 50%, increased fault diagnosis accuracy by 30%, and reduced costly radar cannibalization actions by an estimated 23,000 man hours per year.

(PRWEB) December 10, 2005 -- The U.S. Navy E-2C “Hawkeye” aircraft community completed a pilot test of the MaintenanceMax™ performance support system (PSS) for AN/APS-145 radar transmitter maintenance and found that the PSS reduced troubleshooting time by 50%, increased fault diagnosis accuracy by 30%, and reduced costly radar cannibalization actions by an estimated 23,000 man hours per year.

The pilot, sponsored by the Naval Personnel Development Command (NPDC), located in Norfolk, Virginia, tested the performance of both junior and master aircraft technicians equipped with MaintenanceMax against technicians equipped with standard technical manuals and validated that significant performance gains in terms of productivity and maintenance quality are possible using the performance support system. NPDC and its dominant command, the Naval Education and Training Command, are focusing on performance support technology to address the applied knowledge and refresher training requirements of cross-trained “hybrid sailors” as part of the Navy’s Human Capital Strategy.

“This performance support technology test validates the fact that sailors work faster and identify faulty components more accurately when they are provided with a maintenance tool that arranges information according to how they actually conduct maintenance,” states Roger LaPlante, MaintenanceMax Program Manager. “Standard interactive electronic technical manuals can’t provide maintenance communities with such dramatic performance gains because they aren’t designed from a maintainer’s perspective.”

MaintenanceMax performance support technology provides E-2C maintainers with formally-approved troubleshooting instructions integrated with interactive wiring diagrams, short animated training clips, detailed component location diagrams, and technical tips or expert “gouge” collected from master technicians, all delivered on compact, rugged computers.

“The primary factor in the success of this performance support system initiative for the E-2C community is the active involvement of the maintenance technicians themselves,” says LaPlante. “The E-2C technicians helped design the process model for the performance support system from the ground up to guarantee that it meets their number one maintenance concern: speed of data access.”

Improving data access speed and maintenance work speed on the flight line helps ensure that E-2C aircraft are affordably maintained and rendered fully mission capable in the least amount of time, the Navy’s definition of “cost-wise readiness.”

It is anticipated that the E-2C MaintenanceMax performance support system development and deployment effort will continue through 2006, encompassing data for the entire AN/APS-145 radar set.

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