CUTTING THE COST OF NUTS AND BOLTS


SUSTAINMENT MODEL PROMOTES AGILITY While the IDIQ contracting mechanism yields many important benefits, equally beneficial to robot readiness throughout the extensive customer base is RLSC’s sustainment model. Its maintenance philosophy is to repair robots to the lowest repairable component. Since RLSC is able to purchase components at the lowest level of the bill of materials for robotic systems, technicians need not remove a depot-level repair part, or major assembly, from a fully configured robot—essentially removing an entire assembly, shipping it to another facility for repair or refurbishment, and then applying a replacement assembly in its place.


Instead, the technician can troubleshoot and then isolate the smallest compo- nent causing the failure and complete a work order action to remove and replace it. These lower-level components can include nuts, bolts, screws or other pieces


TAB A GOES INTO SLOT B


RLSC technician Todd Oakey rebuilds the arm of a Talon robot. RLSC recovers components from legacy systems and uses them as stock for newer projects, improving capabilities and providing a bridge between older systems and newer ones. (Photo by Jay Lambertson, RLSC)


of hardware, wiring harnesses or control- ler boards.


Te depot-level repair part replacement process was put in place in 2006 when these robotic systems were first procured for the contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. When RLSC assumed responsibility for the sustainment of all non-standard equipment robotics systems in 2014, the sustainment strategy shifted to the more agile model that remains in place.


For example, a technician might deter- mine that a manipulator arm assembly has a fault: One of the arm’s joints is not moving through its intended range of motion. If the former depot-level repair part model were applied, the techni- cian would have to remove an entire arm assembly and replace it with a costly new or refurbished one. However, under RLSC’s model, the technician would isolate the fault to the smallest repairable


or replaceable component, such as a pinion gear within one of the arm’s motors.


Tere are four major benefits to be real- ized when applying this model. Te first is financial. Te cost of a whole arm assembly can exceed $20,000, while the cost of an arm motor pinion is $50. Over a five-year period, RLSC completed approximately 650 work orders to repair robot arms.


If every arm had been done using the depot-level repair part process, the cost of the arm assemblies would have been roughly $13 million. But filling those work orders using the arm motor pinion gear reduces the cost to approximately $35,000. Even if each work order were isolated to an arm motor, it would be $3 million versus $13 million, a savings of $10 million over that five-year period.


Te second benefit is supply availability, impacting the turnaround time for the work order action to be completed. By


42


Army AL&T Magazine


January-March 2019


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