Model Based Sustainment for Asset Tracking

SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONSThis paper proposes an approach to ensure robust asset tracking is consider in the sustainment lifecycle. Considerations were made on prescribing a closed loop process that identifies and supports the interoperability with the overall sustainment architecture from the as-built to as-maintained configuration for fielded systems. Proper configuration management is critical for large acquisition programs especially when tracking as-built or delivered in comparison to as-maintained bill of materials (BOM). Indirect effects due to lack of robust configuration control must be considered as there is significantly impact to a program long-term sustainment strategy if endured. Without data integrity through uniquely tracking items on the platform, new advance capabilities such as maintenance predictive analytics to predict when failures occur, and ready based sparing analysis become burden through erroneous data entry and relationships.It is evident that Model Based Sustainment (MBS) asset tracking is an enabler to reducing the maintenance burden and O&S cost. Hence the need to leverage MBS constructs holistically with robust configuration tracking with all key stakeholders as platforms change configuration. Programs with high complexity in configuration can achieve positive benefits by leveraging advance technology such as Machine-Readable Information (MRI) labels to ensure accurate traceability to the replaced items on the platform. This type of capability does require significant considerations to understand the necessity and level of fidelity required for item tracking and potential impacts to data exchange processes between stakeholders.