Integrated Shipboard and Shore-Based Maintenance Management Decision Tool

Impact Technologies, in collaboration with Rolls Royce Naval Marine (support letter attached) and Life Cycle Engineering (LCE), propose the development and demonstration of a shipboard and shore-based maintenance decision tool that can autonomously and optimally select and schedule maintenance actions for Naval Ship Systems from a readiness and cost/benefit perspective. The proposed strategies will include the capability to account for risk across critical shipboard systems, integration with CBM systems, and procedures for maximizing ship system readiness based on mission requirements. Specific ties to economic models for assessing total operations/support cost and optimization modules for autonomous maintenance task selection and resource scheduling are also proposed. These developments will be eventually implemented within the framework of a maintenance decision support software product that will provide engineering and financial justification for maintenance and support decisions. The maintenance management optimization software will utilize various levels of engineering analysis based on shipboard system health indices/status that are coupled with comprehensive economic models that will form the basis of the automated maintenance optimization process. Two collaborating approaches will be investigated in the Phase I program. The first approach will utilize the predictions on remaining useful life or degradation levels (prognostics) of critical ship systems to project risk at any time in the future. The resulting fault/failure probabilities will then be processed with an economic model to determine the most cost effective maintenance actions to perform at specific times in the future. The second approach utilizes a model-based reasoning algorithm that assesses the cause and effect relationships among all predisposing factors influencing maintenance decisions. Based on the Phase I results, the Phase II program will focus on specific applications on DD(X) such as the Main Turbine System (MTS), which Impact is currently working on maintenance reasoning software for Rolls Royce Naval Marine and Northrop Grumman.