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The Logista Volume 6, Issue 3 | August 2016

Inside This Issue:

Unlocking the Potential of Vendor Furnished Information (VFI)

Robustness: Something MORE than Reliability

Staff Member Spotlight: Jose Cavazos, DML

Letter from the President

Dear Readers—

I am proud to announce that ALE is now a third-party certified Woman-

Owned Small Business (WOSB). ALE has also received national certifica-

tion as a Women’s Business Enterprise by the ORV-WBC, a regional

certifying partner of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council

(WBENC). Building on our strong reputation as a world leader in the area

of Life Cycle Cost and Specialty Engineering, ALE continues to add

certifications and capabilities that make us a valuable teammate.

This edition of The Logista highlights how effectively obtaining and utilizing

Vendor Furnished Information (VFI) can improve your bottom line.

I hope you enjoy this quarter’s newsletter. If you are interested in adding

ALE’s skillset to your latest workload or teaming with us on a future

project, please contact me.

Best Regards,

Renee Coogan, President

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Vendor Furnished Information (VFI) is the lifeblood of the Engineering and Logistic process. It is the basis of all sustain-ment efforts and a key to customer satisfaction. VFI is comprised of all data obtained from vendors in the course of de-signing, constructing, and supporting a system. It includes program-specific data in the form of drawings, specifications, parts lists, technical manuals, reliability and maintainability reports, engineering analyses, training materials and other technical documentation.

When done properly and in a timely manner, VFI can substantially re-duce the cost of designing and producing a new system. For example, it has been estimated that approximately 70% of the analysis required to develop a new Navy ship is performed at the vendor level or ob-tained from prior ships. That is a significant investment of program resources! If properly obtained, good VFI could reduce the cost of En-gineering and Logistics by as much as 35%.

In addition to savings on the cost of data and data use associated with government programs, an improved VFI process will also aid in raising mission capable readiness, experiencing a greater degree of system integration, and lowering acquisition and sustainment cost for future programs. If not properly managed, poor VFI will increase the contrac-tor workload and delay delivery of data to the customer, and in ex-treme cases delay delivery of the system.

This article defines the areas of greatest opportunity for improvement in the VFI process for prime contractors, and suggests steps of an effective process. The recommended approach has been developed and refined through working directly with prime contractors, system integrators, and component ven-dors. Using this unique and innovative process, a systems analysis viewpoint is consistently applied, ensuring that not only are process improvements in a single area addressed, but also that improvements are made across all functional regions and all phases of the acquisition process.

How to Improve Your Approach to VFI

Do not just flow CDRLs to vendors! This is the biggest piece of advice I can give. Too often, CDRLs are passed to vendors who may be inexperienced with deciphering what is actually needed by the prime contractor. This creates schedule delays and results in too much data, too little data, and/or not the right data. To accomplish a successful VFI program, it is necessary to be skilled in the interpretation of system level data requirements for timely processing and a focus on “right sizing” data requirements. This key action can be taken by the prime or a system integrator to improve the quali-ty and relevancy of the received VFI.

A second change to make to your VFI process is to emphasize the importance of VFI with vendors during the early-on contract negotiation phase and to treat VFI as a program within the program. Make ease of obtaining and cost of ob-taining VFI a factor in determining vendors. Designing a program that prioritizes VFI from the onset will prevent sched-ule delays due to lack of VFI and cost savings due to not having to renegotiate the delivery of VFI after an initial con-tract with vendors.

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Unlocking the Potential of Vendor Furnished Information (VFI) By Stephen Brunner, Business Director

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Implementing these ideas requires a commitment by the program team and upper management. Once this commitment is achieved, the following specific actions are recommended to be taken to create an efficient VFI Process:

Review specification and standards. - Define stakeholders and their data needs.

- Identify applicable specifications and tailor them to the vendor’s product.

Create and implement vendor classifications best suited for meeting program requirements.

Document clear descriptions of vendor support to include the level of detail and schedule.

Treat VFI as a program. - Institute kick-off meetings to ensure solid understanding

by all parties of contractor and vendor needs. - Require incremental submittals beginning with existing

OEM data on similar equipment. - Establish data acceptance criteria and train data review-

ers.

Tailor data status/sharing and build communication chan-nels to ensure the best environment for success.

Demonstrate the VFI Process to verify its effectiveness.

Monitor and adjust procedures as required and implement throughout the entire enterprise.

Conclusions

The benefits of a successful VFI process are many. Obtaining VFI in an effective, consistent manner increases competitiveness. With the prime (or business specializing in integrating processes) coordinating with both vendors and suppliers on how to best work together in a cooperative environment with clear communication, VFI data needs can be met and implementation process improve-ments and tools can be expeditiously put into practice. This ensures efficient and effective electronic data review and dissemination. The recommended VFI process will shorten the time of the program cycle, aid in improving system specifi-cations, and impact the bottom line through cost savings.

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Robustness: Something MORE than Reliability By David Aurand, Sr. Systems Analyst

If it is said that something is “reliable,” we will have an expectation that the item will perform its intended function as designed, every time. My wife and I have a 15 year old minivan that doesn’t seem to realize that it is old. Assuming it was in its twilight, we bought its replacement and decided we’d just hang onto it until it died. That was 4 years ago, and the darn thing is closing in on 300,000 miles. With virtually nothing but normal maintenance, it has been a very reliable vehicle.

If, however, it is said that something is “robust,” this term perhaps carries a slightly different connotation – i.e., that the item is capable of tolerating heavy use, misuse, or outright abuse while continuing to function. My minivan is reliable, but would it still be going strong and have accumulated this much mileage if used, say, as a dune buggy?

Being frequently transferred around the country during my days in the service, I was once told by a moving company representative that “five moves equals a fire” in terms of damage to one’s household goods. However, there are certain wood furniture items these days that seem to be made of little more than com-pressed sawdust; these items are evidently not designed to be moved across the room, let alone across the continent. When you buy them, you may find they can be suitable for their intended purpose in a static, unchanging environment. But you certainly didn’t pay for robustness; and I have never heard this kind of furniture described as such.

Beyond the Specifications

Some products have robustness as their main selling feature. For those of us old enough, the Timex slogan “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking“ is the definitive (and clichéd) declaration of robustness. Bic advertisements of that same era showed a ballpoint pen strapped to an ice skate and being dragged around on the ice, followed by the tip being held in a flame for a few seconds before the skat-er grandly writes “BIC” on an easel. Of course, no one is going to use their pen this way. But their unspoken message was robustness.

Is there any tool more misused than the common screwdriver? Perhaps only half the time is it actually used for turning screws. It is nearly as likely to be used for prying lids off of

paint cans, chiseling out wood, separating two items stuck together, or as a lock on a hasp. For some folks, it is a gardening tool. How is a person supposed to remove a

door hinge pin without one?

The point is that we can have such over-engineered expectations of them. Imag-ine if a screwdriver was made only just good enough for the specifications applica-

ble to rotating a screw. Imagine our disappointment if tapping the butt end of the handle with a hammer caused it to shatter, or if the shaft deformed while prying.

There are, of course, differences from one screwdriver to another in how much punish-ment they can take. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a special “ruggedized” or

“military grade” screwdriver. Aren’t they “ruggedized” already?

We once had a customer admit that they fully intended to use (abuse?) the system being procured at a far higher oper-ational tempo than was reflected in the design specifications. The customer didn’t want to pay the higher costs associ-ated with the design of the system to support its intended application. Time will tell whether their “cross your fingers and hope for the best” strategy will pay off for them.

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Insensitivity

Dr. Genichi Taguchi developed the Robust Design Method (RDM). Rather than looking for ways to reduce variability, the general approach of RDM involves finding the most critical factors that impact the system’s function, and then changing the parameters for them so that the function becomes insensitive to variability. It’s like doing a sensitivity analysis for the ultimate purpose of reducing sensitivity.

A good bomb is one that goes BOOM where it is intentionally dropped and does not go BOOM anywhere else. Following a series of devastating accidents aboard aircraft carriers in the late 1960s, the US Navy began in earnest an effort to de-velop insensitive munitions (IM). Accidents are bound to happen, and it is undesirable for bombs to “cook off” if exposed to a fire or heat source – such as a flight deck accident (a la USS Forrestal, Oriskany, Enterprise, and Nimitz). The ongoing effort in the IM field is to reduce the sensitivity of ordnance to its environment. Therefore, it is fair to say that naval ord-nance is being made more robust, or “ruggedized.”

Simplicity versus Complexity

Not all reliable systems are robust (think minivan = bad dune buggy); but can a system be considered robust without being reliable? In my opinion, no. Reliability is the ante just to be in the game.

Intuitively, we understand that the more complex a system is, the more “fragile” it generally is. There are more ways that it can fail, so the associated risk is higher. Conversely, simplicity, while not a guarantee of robustness, can certainly pro-vide a boost in that direction. There are fewer aspects to ruggedize. Perhaps it is the simplicity of a screwdriver that has helped to make it the robust and easily abusable tool we know today.

And yet, some very robust systems depend on complexity for their robustness. For example, the human body is quite ro-bust in its adaptability to a range of temperatures—feedback loops involving complex electrical systems command sweat glands to produce more or less moisture and direct tiny muscles which move the radiator-like capillaries of the blood stream nearer to or farther from the skin surface. It all works together grandly, without a thought. This is an “active” ro-bustness, far different from the “passive” robustness of a screwdriver.

When designing robustness into a system, the decision about whether to take an active or passive approach must be carefully considered.

Satisfaction

Why should we care about robustness of a system at all? Maybe a better question is ‘When should we care?’ Your smartphone was probably not designed to survive a swim in the commode; and once that has happened, it’s too late to wish you’d spent extra for a LifeProof case or a phone model designed to withstand a dunking. In the not-too-distant fu-ture, consumer choice will drive nearly all smartphones to be water-resistant, in the same way that most wristwatches are now water-resistant – something that was once an expensive novelty feature.

Sawdust furniture, and similarly fragile things, will continue to exist as long as they are sufficiently inexpensive to main-tain their own little corners of the ecosystem. But robustness, I believe, is an evolutionary advantage for products, and that “natural selection” in the form of consumer choice will, over time, tend to render the less robust extinct.

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S TAF F M E MB E R SP OT L IG HT

To learn more about any of the articles or the topics discussed in The Logista, please contact us directly at

staff@ale.com and connect with us through social media!

WWW.ALE.COM

Mr. Cavazos is a Maintenance Analyst and a Demonstrated Master Logistician (DML) who has been with ALE for over 10 years at our Gautier, MS office. He has been a key member of the ALE family in representing ALE in the Gulf Coast region.

With over 25 years of experience in commercial and marine equipment, for both hardware and software, Mr. Cavazos is expert in developing detailed maintenance procedures and IPS delivera-bles. Additionally, his thirst for learning has led him to pursue several certifications and specialized training, including Certification in Diesel Mechanics, NAVSEA Reliability Centered Maintenance Lev-el II Certification, and U.S Navy Gas Turbine Engines Service School Command “A” School.

Mr. Cavazos is a decorated US Navy veteran, who has performed extensive preventive maintenance on-board a Navy frigate, conducted Engineering Casualty Control Exercises, Light Off Exams, Opera-tional Propulsion Plant Examinations and started, maintained, and operated a 240 MW Combined Cycle, Natural Gas Fired, Merchant Power Plant. Mr. Cavazos and his wife, Kathy, have been mar-ried over 23 years and have 2 girls. He enjoys riding his motorcycle and playing the guitar.

Jose A. Cavazos, DML

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