Impacts of Commercial Maintenance Technology on Army Materiel Maintenance Practices

摘要

Vehicle readiness and availability are critical to supporting our logistics mission, both in peacetime and while we fight the Global War on Terrorism. While heavy and depot-level maintenance, troubleshooting, and diagnostics can be, at least in part, addressed with the use of off-board test sets, operator maintenance requires the insertion of some level of sensing and wireless communications technologies into the vehicle platforms. This helps to accomplish the dissemination of diagnostics data to the mechanic to allow him or her to perform the desired maintenance functions. While many of these solutions are being explored and even used in the Service branches, many more may be available for transition from technology developed by globally influential companies such as International Truck and Engine Corporation. Maintenance technologies developed for the commercial market with process efficiency in mind may have impact on operator-level maintenance practices and procedures in both maintenance hours and platform downtime. These technologies potentially allow for repair activities to commence as soon as the vehicle reaches the depot, rather than having to go through a diagnostics check with off-board test equipment. This study aims to investigate Army maintenance practices and the impacts on maintenance turnaround time of using maintenance technologies developed to service the global marketplace. The main method for data collection on Army systems is utilization of the extensive reports generated from the Army's Integrated Logistics Analysis Program (ILAP). Maintenance turnaround time was analyzed for the Army's M915 series line haul truck in Iraq and at Fort Hood, TX. The M915 was selected based on its close kinship to platforms in commercial long-haul trucking.