Naval Ships Data Management

RINA Warship 2016 – International Conference – Technical Paper

Paper Presented at the RINA Warship 2016 International Conference in UK

LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT MATRIX – OPTIMISING LIFE CYCLE MAINTENANCE OF NAVAL SHIPS

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ArshadTK Warship

Ship’s Life Cycle Management Matrix

The demand for increasing the operational availability of the naval ships is at its peak due to the increasing mission commitments across the world. The exponential cost of building complex naval ships coupled with the global economic slowdown has constrained even the most powerful governments from venturing in to the programs for fleet expansion at a rate proportional to the existing demand. LCMMThis situation has forced the world navies and leading naval ship builders to focus on optimizing and strategizing the maintenance aspects of the naval platforms and the equipment onboard in order to provide enhanced availability and a robust Through Life Management of the assets.  The requirement is to increase the operational availability of the existing assets through the implementation of efficient maintenance strategies and to optimize the life cycle maintenance of the future assets through the application of logistics engineering right from the design and construction phase up until the disposal phase.
The engineering decisions taken during the various phases of the life cycle of a naval platform is not only relevant from an overall cost perspective but also has the potential to make serious impact on the efficiency and availability of the platform to deliver the role and functions envisaged during the conceptual stages. Life Cycle Management Matrix has been developed to focus on identifying the key elements and areas of logistics engineering which needs to be considered during the life cycle of a naval platform for optimizing the maintenance requirements and to establish an efficient and cost effective maintenance program.

(Abstract of article)

Estimation of Maintenance Cost of Naval Ships

Reasonable estimation of the Maintenance Cost of the ships is one of the important requisites for preparing the fleet Operation and Support (O&S) budget of any Navy. The O&S cost would mainly include the Personnel, Fuel and the Maintenance cost  and normally the yearly maintenance cost of commissioned Naval Ship would consist of the following:

1. Afloat Maintenance Cost – Man-hours of the ship’s crew involved in the Level 1 maintenance activities. EMC1
2. Intermediate Maintenance Cost – Man-hours of the Base Maintainers involved in the Level 2  maintenance activities.
3. Workshop and Depot Maintenance cost – Man-hours for the Level 3 maintenance activities, Cost of Docking, Refits, Planned Additions & Alterations, unscheduled maintenance costs etc.
4. Material costs – Cost of spares, consumables etc. including material handling costs.
5. Industrial Service Costs – Cost of optional and mandatory service support availed from industries, including the OEM assistance.
6. Maintenance Training and quality costs.

While the calculation of the maintenance cost based on the historic data for the fleet and organization shall give a more accurate estimation, this is often tedious and time-consuming; especially in cases where the availability of reliable historic data is a question mark. In such situations the alternate solution is to go for a high level estimate using the Life Cycle Cost thumb rules.

EMC2According to the thumb rules of Life Cycle Costing the procurement cost of a ship amounts to 40 percentage of the total Life Cycle Cost and the balance 60 percentage amounts for its sustainment and disposal. Further break down of the cost of sustainment shows that the cost of maintenance amounts to 20 to 30% of the procurement cost and it varies with the size and complexity of the ships.

Clean India – In the real sense

CleanIndia

The ‘Clean India’ campaign launched by our Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi is surely a mission which was long overdue to be undertaken. The key to the successes of this campaign will be the cultural change which needs to be inculcated in to the minds of our people who never think twice before littering in the public places. It is required to develop a sense of responsibility in the minds of every individual to ensure that our country is kept clean and tidy in the same manner as they would like to keep their homes. This campaign is surely a right step in the right direction to propel our country’s march towards becoming a developed nation.

For the ‘Clean India’ campaign to be successful in all respect, it would be necessary for the authorities to focus on the elimination of causes which leads to an unclean India. It’s high time that we address the issue of lack of toilets in our country. The lack of proper waste management system too is a matter of concern. The lessons of personal hygiene and cleanliness needs to be taught to every individual and stringent rules and regulations are to be put in place by the government to punish those who are guilty of begriming and polluting our country.

While the ‘Clean India’ campaign would help us in making our country physically clean, a similar campaign needs to be launched by each citizen of India to clean our country from the other evils which are threatening to damage our society and the place we live. The most dangerous among them is the fire of communalism and terrorism that are being ignited in the minds of our people by religious and political groups who stand to get benefitted in vote politics by dividing the society. The incidents of communal violence and terrorist activities which were orchestrated by these anti social elements in recent past have scarred the social fabric of our country to such an extent that polarization created by it now threatens to live at large not only in the minds of people who were directly affected by it but also in the minds of the generations to come. The real act of cleaning India would be by eliminating the scars thus created and also socially eliminating the forces which were responsible for the creation of such scars.

Another evil which needs to be cleaned from our society is that of corruption and red tape that exists among the political and the bureaucratic fraternity. The cases of corruption which have been exposed by the media recently shows that our country is ahead in one area for sure – the art of corruption. Corruption has become a part of our social living and it seems to be accepted as a part of our culture. This thought and culture needs to be cleaned from the society before it derails our positive efforts to make India a developed country.

The real ‘Clean India’ also means that we eliminate the causes that pollute our nature and exploit our natural resources. An ideal ‘Clean India’ should also ensure that we have ‘Green India’. The authorities will have to get serious about the preservation of our nature and focus on the strict implementation of rules and regulations in this direction.

There are several other evils in our society which also needs to be cleaned on priority. It is the duty and responsibility of all Indians to play our part in the real clean up of India. Let’s launch ourselves in to this campaign to ‘Clean India’ in the real sense to ‘Save India’.

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