Annual Report 2007

SUSTAINing a Variety of Defense Systems SUSTAIN has added supply-chain analysis modules and extended its support for aircraft maintenance. Shown are Air Force maintenance crews. S USTAIN, a GTRI software suite used by the U.S. military to support aircraft maintenance by tracking obsolete parts, has added support for conventional aircraft-related maintenance and sustainability tasks. GTRI scientists have developed new modules that offer in-depth supply chain management analysis. SUSTAIN decision aid tools can now keep managers current on everyday maintenance and sustainment by addressing such critical issues as reliability, procurability and serviceable versus unserviceable equipment. The new modules expand the program’s original focus, which centers on missiondegradation analyses that help managers forecast obsolescence issues on older systems and acquire obsolete components. “By using SUSTAIN, many managers find that component obsolescence isn’t such a major problem for them – that they can resolve issues by employing part-substitution and subassembly redesign,” said Powers Garmon, a GTRI principal research scientist who leads the SUSTAIN program. “What concerns them most is being sure they can meet mission requirements, and that includes monitoring the reliability of their key assemblies and the necessity of keeping a certain number of items serviceable.” SUSTAIN includes decision-aid modules for supportability, mission degradation and technology insertion. Each module allows managers to look at maintenance and sustainability from different perspectives, ranging from high-level overviews to detailed parts-level information. GTRI began SUSTAIN by custom developing software for specific Air Force programs. In a typical SUSTAIN project, GTRI scientists extract and analyze maintenance data. Then they transfer that work to SUSTAIN software, which analyzes and models the data and allows managers to track their maintenance situation more clearly. SUSTAIN’s designers have increasingly automated the software over the years. They have found that extensive automation can allow a small staff to support an entire sustainment program, while limiting the need to use commercial databases to obtain maintenance-related information. SUSTAIN can be used for an array of defense maintenance tasks. For example, it is currently supporting an extensive GTRI technologyinsertion project involving a large number of military air traffic control radios. (See page 39) Garmon believes SUSTAIN can be used effectively for most defense-related maintenance and sustainment tasks. Moreover, he adds, SUSTAIN is cost-effective, typically offering a 20-to-one return on investment. “SUSTAIN can analyze the procurability status of essentially any type of component,” he said. SUSTAIN currently includes seven modules: mission degradation, supportability assessment, technology insertion, depot repair assessment, inventory assessment, reliability assessment and repair and cost assessment. 1 www.gtri.gatech.edu http://www.gtri.gatech.edu

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Annual Report 2007

Annual Report 2007 Contents From the Director Research at GTRI Defense and Security Health and Human Systems Energy and Environment Manufacturing Technologies Information and Communication Technologies GTRI Around the World Interdisciplinary Research Centers The Laboratories of GTRI Georgia Tech Ireland GTRI by the Numbers GTRI and Georgia Tech Supporting Breakthrough Research GTRI Professional Education The People of GTRI

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