engineers work to reduce the sustainment burden by analyzing support structures for each system design and selecting those that emphasize reduced manpower requirements, modularity, reliability and use of existing tools and facilities.
Good communication skills are also vital for logistics engineers to validate a process into products or systems. “Logis- ticians and engineers are not wired the same way,” Chronister
said. “Logistics
engineers have to be good communica- tors and be that consensus builder with their people skills and credibility.”
RECENT SUCCESSES Te program has generated a number of cost-effective solutions. For example, the Black Hawk Project Office found that having an engineer working with their logistics team improved the integration of the engineering and logistics capabili- ties and helped them better execute their mission.
Recently the logistics engineering team provided a break-even analysis on the UH-60 main rotor hub. Te issue was whether purchasing new rotor hubs was more cost-effective than overhauling the existing obsolete ones. Te team com- pared the life-cycle costs, and determined it would be more expensive in the imme- diate future to buy new hubs. After five years, however, the model indicated that the cost of buying new hubs would break even with the cost of overhauling the obsolete hubs. After 12 years, overhaul- ing the obsolete hubs proved to be $11.51 million more costly.
Logistics engineers have also helped the UH-60 program reduce sustainment costs through the implementation of new technologies, including cold spray, a method of suspending metals or other materials in gas, then spraying the gas
on damaged machine parts at supersonic speeds, reducing repair times.
Te UH-60 logistics engineering team lead chaired an integrated product team (IPT) to transition new cold spray repair technology to aviation components. A transmission sump pan, a component of the gearbox housing, was chosen from the salvage yard as the test component. Te team sprayed, tested and qualified the pan with an immediate cost avoid- ance of roughly $17,000. Te sump pan would have been disposed of if not for the work of the IPT.
Te fallout rate for the transmission sump alone is roughly four per year, which trans- lates to a cost avoidance of about $68,000 annually with the cold spray technol- ogy. Te repair techniques identified in this test will be applied in the future to components experiencing similar dam- age and, if applied to the other gearbox housing components, this technology could achieve a savings of $3.5 million. Earlier this year, AMRDEC’s Fernando
“Rios” Merritt, the Black Hawk logistics engineering team lead, won a Defense Manufacturing Technology Achievement Award for his work to integrate cold spray technology into Army systems.
STEADY GROWTH SUPPORTING SOLDIERS Since its inception, the logistics engineer- ing program has grown steadily, from two engineers supporting the Black Hawk program in 2009 to 19 engineers sup- porting 12 organizations today, including the Chinook, Lakota and Apache heli- copter programs, close combat weapon systems and unmanned aircraft systems.
“Much of the success goes to the first two logistics engineers, Merritt and Chad Reeves, and the immediate impact they made in the first pilot of this capability in the Black Hawk Project Office,” said
Lou Sciaroni, AMRDEC Logistics Engi- neering Branch Chief. “However, each of the successive team members has contin- ued this line of excellence and through their efforts has helped the team evolve to where it is today.”
“Te logistics engineering program here at AMRDEC is unique because we are sup- porting the warfighter in a very real way,” said Merritt. “A lot of times you don’t see the fruits of your labor, but when techni- cal solutions are made on behalf of the Soldier, you know your team has a direct impact on whether that Soldier has every- thing he or she needs to continue and complete their mission.”
CONCLUSION AMRDEC logistics engineers help reduce life-cycle costs, enhance opera- tional capability and optimize support infrastructure through their impact on design and logistics efforts. Teir know- ledge helps technicians, logisticians and other engineers to take advantage of new capabilities and incorporate them into their processes.
“Te program is growing, and AMRDEC logistics
engineers will continue to
impact the life-cycle costs of Army weapon systems, and ultimately the war- fighter, through their engineering efforts and their focus on improving support- ability,” said Sciaroni.
For more information, go to http://www.
amrdec.army.mil/AMRDEC/.
MS.CARLOTTA MANEICE is a program analyst
for
Intuitive Research and Tech-
nology and provides program support for AMRDEC Public Affairs. She has an MBA and a B.A. in communication from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.
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ASC.ARMY.MIL 59
LOGISTICS
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