Cost reduction during maintenance & repair

During this era of escalating sustaining and maintenance costs, every test, repair, and overhaul activity needs to be as efficient and economic as humanly possible. However, all test and repair activities do not always fit the ATE 'model'. Rather, low-technology equipment test and repair is typically composed of numerous manual actions performed in a series of predetermined steps. This process could be likened to having a Test Program with many manual interventions merged with a set of Test Program Instructions. Rework and repair facilities engaged in these activities also need the efficiencies and benefits offered by automation and consistency of testing and diagnostic actions. But how can we accomplish this? This paper describes a recently deployed rework / production system that eliminates all of the superfluous 'process control and tracking' effort required during operational system test and maintenance, and allows support personnel to focus on their primary task of testing and repairing operational systems. The deployed system is totally 'paperless' and eliminates all operational costs associated with the preparing, handling controlling, storing, and checking or auditing efforts found with traditional paper-based test and maintenance systems. Logging of all test, measurement, repair or rework activities, and their metrics support any possible audit or process improvement initiative. This capability also yields a further indeterminate, yet tangible cost reduction during maintenance and overhaul activities in a Depot rework or Production environment. It also establishes that other cost-saving improvements, such as reducing the ambiguity within the Probable Cause of Failure (PCOF) diagnostic at the O or I Level, based on Depot historical repair statistics, could also directly benefit from this type of system. In conclusion, the system demonstrates that unnecessary costs incurred during the test and repair of equipment that does not fit the traditional ATE 'model' can easily he eliminated from established rework/production test and repair facilities. This more economic and efficient maintenance environment greatly helps achieve the goal of efficient and cost-effective sustainment.