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Original Date: 03/06/2006
Revision Date: / /
Information : Test Equipment Business Development
Raytheon’s Louisville facility is upgrading test equipment to support its customers. With data from lean manufacturing practices indicating the probability of high risk associated with the use of old equipment, Raytheon has documented significant productivity improvement associated with test equipment upgrades.
Raytheon-Louisville is working on test equipment (TE) development to upgrade old TE throughout the facility for U.S. and international customers. Phalanx depot TE was originally procured from General Dynamics or built in- house by Louisville engineers during the 1970s.
In the 1980s Raytheon started repair work versus building new Phalanx systems. However, the majority of TE had not been upgraded. Production TE was generally funded under United States Navy (USN) contracts. The last USN equipment upgraded was in 1995. During this upgrade, lower-level testing capability was added for the Phalanx Block 1B surface configuration.
Improvements were needed due to parts obsolescence, declining support on old parts, and to standardize TE platforms for the Raytheon-Louisville site as well as other customers. There are 22 automated and 29 manual TE’s that Raytheon-Louisville is in the process of upgrading both nationally and internationally. The Louisville facility has recognized that it must provide affordable upgrade prices to its key international customers.
Raytheon-Louisville is planning to perform TE upgrades by leveraging direct commercial sales (DCS) and a Raytheon-funded effort to support the USN with the goal of having a common, supportable TE across the Phalanx community. International TE proposals (i.e., DCS) include having a second set of TE for the Louisville facility to provide support, hardware and software upgrades, and fault insertion and analysis capability. This equates to cost savings of $5 million by 2007 for the customer.
The Pareto Chart (Figure 3- 2) illustrates that TE is the largest identified contributor to undesirable effects and should be targeted for improvement. TE cannot be supported beyond approximately 2009 due to obsolescence, which leads to high risk. TE downtime data indicates 24% for 2001, which equates to 3 months per year.
Raytheon has made investment toward some upgrades with benefit gains that include:
Hydraulic systems in TE were changed from hydraulics to pneumatics in 1990. This opened up the capability to overhaul and test pneumatic components and subsystems, which resulted in a 50% turnaround reduction and a 25% reduction in repair cost. Return on investment for this change was approximately one year.
On test equipment TE8510RF, test reliability increased. Test time has reduced 80% and instrumentation has reduced from 84%.
HP7906/HP7907/HP7911 disc drivers were replaced with arrayed optical disc drivers. This simplified backup procedures and standardized disc driver types.
A Canadian Analog-Digital (AD) Standard Test Equipment Program (STEP) plan was developed to transition 1B configuration kits to Raytheon Canadian Limited (RCL). The plan includes RCL purchasing and AD STEP to support testing local control station, remote control station, and remote control panel. The AD system was delivered, verified, and completed in September 2005.
TE 8510 RF system upgrades include moving from using Rocky Mountain and HP 1000 to lab windows and implemented noise capability to the current TE 8510RF system. This upgrade has decreased maintenance, calibration, test time, and setup and tear-+down times.
Figure 3-2. Undesirable Effects Pareto
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