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CAD/PAD

The document discusses the development of the Requirements Determination Module (RDM) by the US Air Force to determine requirements for Cartridge Actuated Devices and Propellant Actuated Devices (CAD/PAD). It was modeled after the Navy's existing Material Planning Study system. Some key challenges in adapting it for Air Force use included obtaining accurate maintenance data from various Air Force systems and overcoming institutional resistance. The RDM provides more accurate projections of CAD/PAD needs based on real maintenance data and schedules, allowing for more efficient procurement and a 30% reduction in inventory levels. It is considered a successful example of a joint sustainment system between the Air Force and Navy.

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228 views

CAD/PAD

The document discusses the development of the Requirements Determination Module (RDM) by the US Air Force to determine requirements for Cartridge Actuated Devices and Propellant Actuated Devices (CAD/PAD). It was modeled after the Navy's existing Material Planning Study system. Some key challenges in adapting it for Air Force use included obtaining accurate maintenance data from various Air Force systems and overcoming institutional resistance. The RDM provides more accurate projections of CAD/PAD needs based on real maintenance data and schedules, allowing for more efficient procurement and a 30% reduction in inventory levels. It is considered a successful example of a joint sustainment system between the Air Force and Navy.

Uploaded by

cetinidris
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

J O I N T

L O G I S T I C S

CAD/PAD Requirements
Determination in the Air Force
A Joint Logistics Success Story
David Williams Anthony Taylor Vern Blair
artridge Actuated Devices (CADs) and Propellant
Actuated Devices (PADs) are explosive items
used in aircraft ejection, life support, weapons
release, and fire-suppression systems. The Department of Defense uses about 3,100 different
configurations. Most are man-rated, requiring a very high
level of reliability. All have defined service lives and must
be replaced periodically. Some CAD/PAD are expended
in normal operations, such as those used for weapons release; others are used only in emergencies. CAD/PAD that
are needed for safety of flight can cause the grounding
of aircraft if they are defective or over-age.

CAD/PAD are normally developed as a component of a


weapon, egress system, or life-support system. For example the 112 CAD/PAD in the B-2 and the 129 CAD/PAD
in the F/A-18 were designed and developed along with
the other systems in those aircraft. In keeping with the
cradle-to-grave concept, overall responsibility for sustainment activities remains with the program manager
when a system is fielded. However, day-to-day responsibility for sustainment activities has been delegated within
each Service to a central entity to benefit from economies
of scale.
In 1998, the Air Force and Navy agreed to form a joint
program office (JPO) to manage the sustainment of
CAD/PAD for both Services. A major business improvement initiative of the CAD/PAD Joint Program has been
adoption of an automated system for determining Air
Force CAD/PAD requirements, using as a basis, the existing Navy system, the Material Planning Study (MPS).
The Air Force version is called the Requirements Determination Module (RDM) and is believed to be the first
joint use of a sustainment system.

Genesis: The Navys Material Planning Study


CAD/PAD are different from other aircraft components
because they are perishable. The requirement for replacement is based on time (service life) rather than variables commonly used in the Navy-wide logistics system,

A successful F-16 Thunderbird pilot ejection at a Mountain


Home AFB air show in 2003 illustrates the importance of
reliable CAD/PAD.
U.S. Air Force photograph by SSgt Bennie J. Davis III

such as flight hours or takeoff and landing cycles. Furthermore, there is a long lead time (typically 18 months)
associated with buying replacement inventory.
To deal with these factors, the Navy has long relied on
centralized planning, using the MPS to predict the quantities of CAD/PAD needed each year to replace over-age
and expended items. Initially, the Navy system was manual, requiring many hours of labor-intensive calculations.
Usage was calculated on predicted average replacements

Williams is director of the CAD/PAD Joint Program Office, Indian Head, Md. Taylor is a consultant to the Joint Program Office. He is a retired Air
Force Reserve colonel and former director of the U.S. House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Transportation, Aviation and Materials. Blair is
the former head of the Air Force CAD/PAD Sustainment Office at Hill AFB, Utah, and currently a consultant with Los Alamos Technical Associates.

Defense AT&L: September-October 2007

14

without regard to the impact of aircraft maintenance and


deployment schedules. The MPS also suffered from the
lack of detail needed to predict precisely the effect of proposed budget cuts on operational aircraft.

Performance in a sustainment program is measured


largely by cost-efficiency. The alignment of acquisition
and sustainment, inventory reductions, and precise procurements have all contributed to this measure.

As computer technology evolved, the Navy recognized


the opportunity to apply technology to improve procurement and inventory planning. The result was automation of MPS and inclusion of several features that
improved just-in-time procurement based on actual fleet
needs, while making the budget highly defendable. The
improved model scheduled change-out of each part in
each aircraft based on individual service life and maintenance-scheduling criteria. With the automated MPS,
program managers have a powerful tool to respond successfully to budget what-ifs. They have been able, for
example, to predict accurately which CAD/PAD would
go over age and consequently, which aircraft (by tail
number) would be grounded if the budget were cut by
a specific amount. The model also provided them with
the ability to determine the impact of service life
changes on operational aircraft and to document the
fleet impact of late deliveries.

The Air Force Gets Interested


Formation of the Joint Program led to interest among Air
Force CAD/PAD managers in improving the Air Force requirements-determination process. Until that time, the
Air Force had relied heavily on decentralized planning
forecasts of projected needs assembled by field organizations. These estimates suffered from some of the same
limitations as the early MPS. The estimates were often
inflated because of a concern with having enough to support the mission. The forecasting process was labor-intensive, with hundreds of using organizations, thousands
of aircraft, and multiple items on each aircraft. The data
developed were difficult to verify because reports included
only the total number of items needed by each organization. In many cases, it was discovered that some requirements were duplicated; in others, the forecast from
a unit could be missing entirely.

MPS works with a key supporting system known as Virtual Fleet Support (VFS) CADPAD (formerly TRACE), which
was developed because Navy-wide logistics systems did
not track the expiration dates and related aircraft installation schedules for these critical components. VFS CADPAD tracks each item installed in the fleet. It also works
with a procurement tracking system that accounts for
due-ins and a core data system that provides key technical and logistics information, such as service life and
how many items are in each aircraft. Together, these systems have given the Navy the ability to know precisely
how many CAD/PAD to buy each year.

Cost, Schedule, and Performance Benefits


The projection of requirements produced by MPS was significantly more accurate, basing need on real requirements, including aircraft maintenance data, rather than
on perception. Smarter buying enabled an overall 30 percent reduction in inventory, which, in turn, meant reduced inspection and storage costs. It also made possible the elimination of waste in the form of items in local
stockpiles that went over age on the shelf.
Having replaced a just-in-case acquisition system with
just-in-time, it became necessary to adjust the sustainment end of the process to make it just-in-time as well.
The result was a toll-free 800 system (later a Web-based
feature of VFS) for filling orders from the fleet for replacement CAD/PAD. These systems achieved dramatic
savings, reducing the time from order to delivery in the
United States to about eight days from what had taken
as much as four months previously (an accomplishment
that was recognized by the Packard Award in 2001).

Adaptation Challenges
There were multiple challenges in adapting the basic concepts in the Navys MPS to Air Force use. Some were dataand programming-related; others were institutional. First,
there was a need to obtain data on installed items (similar to the function performed by the Navys VFS CADPAD system). Air Force field organizations use a variety
of different systems to gather and record maintenance
data. Most of these feed the Reliability and Maintainability Information System (REMIS). In many cases, the data
needed by RDM for projecting future sustainment requirements could be obtained from online data queries
to REMIS; however, in other instances, that was not possible, and specific RDM workarounds had to be devised.
Initially, another issue was data accuracy. When data are
rolled up to REMIS, they are edited, sometimes causing
a record to be rejected. Duplicate and expired records
were also a problem. Software routines written during
the development of RDM have largely eliminated such
problems.
Another problem was a lack of visibility into data generated by the Air Mobility Command (AMC), which employs
a system for gathering and recording maintenance data
that differs from that used by most other commands. As
a result, the query method noted above did not provide
data needed by RDM. Initially, workarounds were created
in RDM to compute requirements based on service life
of the items and total number of installed assets. More
recently, an agreement was reached in which AMC is proCAD/PAD Requirements continued on page 17.

15

Defense AT&L: September-October 2007

CAD/PAD Requirements continued from page 15.


viding maintenance data directly to the JPO, enabling
RDM to compute accurate forecasts.
Perhaps even more significant was a range of institutional
challenges, such as the need to build the trust necessary
to adopt a not-invented-here system. In general, the Air
Force and Navy have many differences in their business
practices. Fortunately, the JPO has operated successfully
for several years, implementing a number of joint process
improvements. This initiative was widely supported by
Air Force managers as just another step forward along
this continuum.
Another challenge arose because of the nature of
CAD/PAD, which are both an aircraft spare and a munitions item. Accordingly, they tend to fall into a no-mansland between these two worlds. As a result, the separate
systems designed to manage aircraft spares and munitions do not handle CAD/PAD well. This is true of the
legacy systems in both Services. Even a prospective Air
Force system for managing aircraft spares will have many
of the old shortcomings. For this reason, the cost-effective solution was deemed to be to adapt the Navy principles and concepts to Air Force use.

Results and Future Opportunities


RDM was used successfully to determine Air Force requirements starting in fiscal year 2006, after a test run
in fiscal 2005 in which RDM was run in parallel with the
legacy method. Despite a lingering need to require field
forecasts for a few part numbers (primarily life-support
and survival-equipment items), JPO estimates a reduction in field workload of about 80 percent. The accuracy
of out-year budget requirements has been significantly
improved. And most important, RDM has greatly increased confidence that the right items are at the right
places at the right time to support the warfighter.
As the Air Force gains experience with RDM, it expects
to further streamline its acquisition and sustainment
processes. Administrative workload will be reduced because of the improvement in the accuracy of requirements, the alignment of Navy and Air Force buying cycles, and the consolidation of procurements for similar
items. On the sustainment side, the Air Force will begin
to use VFS as a tool for ordering replacement CAD/PAD
for its T-6 aircraft, a first step that may lead to much wider
use for other aircraft in the future.

The authors welcome comments and questions and


can be contacted at david.d.williams2@navy.mil,
anthtaylor@aol.com, and vern.blair@hill.af.mil.

17

Defense AT&L: September-October 2007

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