Enterprise and Emerging Manufacturing
Abstract
Enterprise and Emerging Manufacturing is a series of efforts addressing advanced manufacturing technologies and enterprise business practices for defense applications. Key focus areas include direct digital (or additive) manufacturing, advanced manufacturing enterprise, machining, robotics, assembly, and joining. These manufacturing technologies and enterprise business practices will accelerate delivery of technical capabilities to impact current warfighting operations, and manufacturing technologies to reduce the cost, acquisition time and risk of our major defense acquisition programs. With our adversaries forced to innovate rapidly to survive, it's become increasingly important for the U.S. military to improve its own agility and flexibility. The focus is to find a solution to overcome a burdensome acquisition cycle requiring a great amount of cost, time, security, and storage space. Through the use of secure satellite data links or a local parts database, warfighters can access CAD designs for replacement parts, allowing them to repair equipment without the need to establish supply chains or wait for shipments. It allows operators to modify a part's design based on its performance in the field. Emerging manufacturing technologies undergoing development include: Large-scale, challenge for advanced, interoperable machine tool applications, and methods for exchange of 3D official technical data throughout the supply chain and between government and contractors. MTConnect Challenge: Focuses on developing enterprise manufacturing solutions (tools) using newly developed MTConnect interoperable protocol, for use on machining platforms and manufacturing enterprise communication development. MTConnect is an open communication standard that provides the capability to pass data from enterprise components to higher level systems for further processing using the XML based standard. Framework for Assessing Cost and Technology (FACT): Producibility analysis tools will be matured so that component performance, manufacturing processing techniques and cost can be simultaneously considered to achieve an optimum design solution. Current producibility analysis tools do not reuse and connect existing design, manufacturing and cost models. Sustainment and Maintenance will be impacted by maturing advanced sustainability analyses operating within FACT to reduce sustainment costs associated with spare parts acquisition and weapon system maintenance. The technology will enable correct selection of a manufacturing process to minimize cost given the estimated spare part lot sizes. Block Upgrades or Recapitalization using FACT will be critical for performing analyses associated with integrating new requirements into an existing platform to highlight the manufacturing and lifecycle costs associated with the necessary changes to the weapon system in order to meet new operational requirements. 40mm M433 Warhead Producibility: This effort will improve anti-personnel lethality at the squad level, increasing grenadier first shot effectiveness against personnel targets. Optimization of production process prior to transition to Full Rate Production will enable avoidance of significantly high cartridge unit costs. New manufacturing process/techniques will be established to embed discrete fragments into over molded warhead bodies, replacing deep drawn pre-formed manufacturing techniques. Low Velocity 40mm M433 High Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) Grenades do not meet lethality requirement stated in FM 23-31. The grenadier, an integral part of the squad, lacks lethality from the M433 HEDP grenade. The M433 HEDP lethality is restricted by the warhead manufacturing process and design. A new warhead design and manufacturing process is required to achieve lethality requirements and to increase lethality overmatch of the squad. Currently the M433 HEDP warhead is a deep drawn body with pre-formed fragments. The deep drawn warhead body, although cost effective, produces inconsistent fragment sizes, weights, and patterns which reduces warhead lethality. Loading ALIMX-101 into 500 LB General Purpose Bombs: A promising new Insensitive Munitions, IM, explosive has been selected for implementation into the 500 LB General Purpose Bomb used by the Navy and Air Force so an efficient manufacturing process needs to be developed early in the acquisition cycle in order to avoid costly delays in fielding the new IM-compliant system.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2015
- Source ID
- 3e7d8c04c530681579e71fde587d1ef0