• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Initiative launched to improve efficiency of ship maintenance

Hawai'i Navy News

11/29/2002

Cmdr. Rob Newell Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Public Affairs Officer

The people involved in maintaining Navy ships are no strangers to overhauls - but the particular overhaul they now are preparing for promises to be like none they've ever seen. Because in this overhaul, instead of breathing new life into a worn steel ship, the Navy ships' maintenance team hopes to breathe new efficiency into their own processes.

Called SHIPMAIN, this new initiative will involve a team effort by the leaders of a number of Navy commands that have a stake in the maintenance of ships, and will examine the various phases of the ship maintenance planning process, starting from the point where work is first identified by ship's force up through the start of execution.

"We are already very effective at maintaining our ships. We do it very well. But SHIPMAIN is going to help the Navy team of maintainers find ways to do it more efficiently," said Vice Adm. Timothy LaFleur, the Commander of Naval Surface Forces, and the chief executive officer of the SHIPMAIN process improvement team.

By improving the processes across the spectrum of ships' maintenance, LaFleur said he hopes that the greater efficiency will translate into smarter spending.

"One of the keys to achieving the Navy's vision of Sea Power 21 is the concept of Sea Enterprise, which includes finding greater process efficiencies," said LaFleur. "If we can keep maintaining ships with the high quality we currently have, but in a more efficient way, then we can direct more of our efforts towards recapitalizing and modernizing the fleet."

In addition to the commanders of Naval Surface Forces Pacific and Atlantic, the SHIPMAIN team will also include the commander of Naval Air Forces, the commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, and flag officers from the Chief of Naval Operations staff, the Pacific Fleet and Atlantic Fleet staffs, and program executive officers for ships and aircraft carriers. At this time, SHIPMAIN is concentrating on investigating and improving the maintenance planning process involved with surface ships and non-nuclear carriers. Representatives for both carrier and submarine non-nuclear maintenance have been involved in early process reviews, however, and the goal is to make the best maintenance processes as universal as possible.

"This isn't just another program for improving the way we do business," said Vice Adm. Philip M. Balisle, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command. "SHIPMAIN will look at all of our current efforts to improve, and help us to coordinate them to get the maximum benefit. It is going to help us measure what we are doing in our own organizations, and understand the collective impact of how we do business."

A key part of SHIPMAIN will be to identify best practices and standardize them where possible.

"This represents the next phase of the Navy's transformation effort in ship maintenance," said Rear Adm. Jeff Brooks, Deputy Chief of Staff for Maintenance, Pacific Fleet. "We know our ship maintenance is very effective but we must continue to become more efficient. SHIPMAIN will allow us to examine our processes, make modifications where appropriate, and incorporate those enhanced efficiencies throughout the fleet as best practices."

With guidance from process efficiency experts of the Thomas Group, an organization with experience in successfully helping the naval aviation community improve their processes for pilot training and inter-deployment readiness, the SHIPMAIN team understands that whatever the process changes are that may lead to greater efficiency, they will also require changing certain aspects of the culture of maintaining ships.

"Time warfare is our business," said Tom Zych of the Thomas Group. "We are going to help the Navy find ways to align their processes and organizations so they know they are making the best use of the time and money they spend maintaining ships."

For instance, if a ship reports on a Friday that there is a piece of equipment that needs repair work done, does that mean maintainers should work the weekend to fix it? Not necessarily, according to Rear Adm. Dale E. Baugh, Fleet Maintenance Officer, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.

"Maybe we need to look at the risk and cost of working over that weekend, and see what the right answer is," said Baugh. "SHIPMAIN is going to help us look at how we make those decisions, and how we can continue to provide the best possible maintenance even more efficiently."

"Sometimes the right answer may be different than the way ships' maintainers have traditionally approached these challenges," said. LaFleur, "and that will require us to change our culture. It will be a gradual, measured effort, and it will involve everyone from deckplate Sailors to flag officers, but the bottom line is, we need to make sure we are getting our work done in the smartest way we can."