Intelligent Manufacturing € June € 1996 € Vol. 2 € No. 6

U.S. Navy Provides Access to Best Manufacturing Practices

The U.S. Navy's Best Manufacturing Practices (BMP) Center Of Excellence (COE) is available to provide expert assistance on a variety of manufacturing topics, including government-verified "Best Practices, free to anyone in the U.S. industrial base. The BMP COE, which includes its partners from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland, was established by the Navy in 1985 with the mission to collect, analyze and disseminate information on proven techniques used by the government and industry throughout the acquisition process.

The BMP program has four main products: Facility surveys (and resultant database entries); development of engineering guidance documents; the annual BMP workshop; and the Program Managers WorkStation expert system. In 1995, the BMP Program was funded by Congress to open a National Center of Excellence on best design and manufacturing practices.

The Program Managers Workstation (PMWS) is a series of knowledge-based software packages designed to provide timely acquisition and engineering information to the user. According to Brian Willoughby, PMWS program manager, "Workload reduction is a top priority of the PMWS.

Typical project management programs, based on cost and schedule, use the graphical power of the computer to show the user numerous items on the screen at once. However, these programs do little to reduce the workload on an already overworked manager/engineer; in fact, studies have shown that displaying large amounts of data tends to confuse the user and does not allow him to focus on the critical items needing his attention. Rather then display the potentially thousands of things involved in your 'program,' the PMWS typically shows you the one to five most critical items that you should be concerned with now."

The PMWS is different from existing program management tools and is meant to fill a long-standing gap left by them, Willoughby explained. "Other tools, such as Microsoft Project, DSMCs PMSS, AFAM, etc., center mainly on cost, schedule and documentation relationships (typically CDRL or WBS, and DOD 5000-oriented) and attempt to manage an acquisition based on their status. There are many good programs of this type on the market today and the PMWS is not attempting to duplicate their functions. While these tools have their place, and master schedules and documentation are critical for long lead planning and coordinating the interactions between organizations, we still have many acquisition programs failing despite the use of these types of tools," he said.

To address that situation, PMWS tools are centered on the engineering process itself, and are very process-oriented. "If all engineering processes are understood, proper and under control, the results will be as good as the state of the art will allow," Willoughby observed. "Cost and schedule are downstream indicators of technical problems; this is why PMWS tools manage technical and process risks so that engineering problems surface and are given visibility at the earliest possible point."

He provided the following example: "If the risk management portion of the PMWS (TRIMS) indicates that your program is incurring a risk due to a Design Reference Mission Profile not being conducted, the user can go directly to the knowledge base and get full details on why such a profile is needed and how to develop one, including metrics and examples. This type of problem would typically be indicated by the PMWS early in the design process, yet cost and schedule indicators of this problem typically will not surface until the operational test and evaluation process, when the system did not perform properly because the design environments did not reflect current life cycle operational environments."

BMPnet. is an automated, computerized, communication link connecting all BMP Program participants, including expert help lines on a variety of topics. BMPnet can be accessed via the Internet, and is also available on a CD-ROM. For more information, contact the BMPCOE at (301) 403-8100; BMPnet help desk at (301) 403-8179; Web site at http://www.bmpcoe.org; Ernie Renner, BMPCOE director, [email protected]