Our aim here at Apogee Consulting, Inc. is to move above and beyond cost accounting, contract administration, and other back-office matters, to see a bigger picture that encompasses all facets of a company’s business, including operations and program execution. We believe our viewpoint, created (as it were) from a higher perspective, creates more value for our clients. (Thus: the use of the term “Apogee” in our corporate name.) We like to demonstrate our higher perspective, from time to time, by focusing on issues such as technological innovations.

This is one of those times.

We previously discussed issues associated with the U.S. Army’s NextGen Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV). One of the more interesting aspects of that troubled program was the interaction of the rather prosaic armored vehicle with the utterly innovative approach to rapid prototyping and production envisioned for it by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). As you may recall, the Army reportedly intended to award nearly $1 billion during Government Fiscal Year 2011, to “start development of new prototype vehicles,” but the competition for the funding was halted because the Pentagon reportedly saw “risks in proceeding as planned.” Exactly what those risks were was not reported in any detail.

But we were sensitized to the ideas that: (1) more than one GCV prototype might be funded and those prototypes might be competed against each other, and (2) one discriminator in the competition might be the ability to rapidly field prototypes and subsequently modify those prototypes quickly in response to design changes. That latter concept is much more difficult to put into practice than it is to type on a page—especially for the aerospace/defense industry. As DARPA noted, its innovative prototyping/production concepts were “anathema to the current defense industry trend of tightly coupling design and prototyping through multiple design-build-test-redesign iterations.” Our thought is that the team that could break through the historical prototyping approach (as described by DARPA) would be able to dramatically reduce both cost and schedule—which would obviously be a clear competitive advantage.

Our heightened sensitivity led us to a recent Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine article on Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). “What is SLS?” we hear you asking. According to this article on Wikipedia, it is “an additive manufacturing technique that uses a high power laser … to fuse small particles of plastic, metal, ceramic, or glass powders into a mass that has a desired 3-dimensional shape.” The Wikipedia article continues—

The laser selectively fuses powdered material by scanning cross-sections generated from a 3-D digital description of the part (for example from a CAD file or scan data) on the surface of a powder bed. After each cross-section is scanned, the powder bed is lowered by one layer thickness, a new layer of material is applied on top, and the process is repeated until the part is completed. … SLS technology is in wide use around the world due to its ability to easily make very complex geometries directly from digital CAD data. While it began as a way to build prototype parts early in the design cycle, it is increasingly being used in limited-run manufacturing to produce end-use parts.

Here’s a five-minute infomercial on SLS.

The AW&ST article had some nice things to say about SLS, including that its “affinity for rapid prototyping of complex, thin-wall parts that are lightweight and high quality was a natural fit for specialized designs, like those in UAVs.” The article noted that the A&D industry began to use SLS early in the decade, on such programs as the F/A-18 and Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner—but so far the big users have been the UAV programs, which have more of a “let’s try it” attitude. Apparently, many defense programs prefer the cumbersome traditional design/build process that DARPA wants to move away from. As if to emphasize the cutting-edge nature of SLS, the article cautioned that “so far, the attraction [of SLS] extends only in the transition from design to reality [read: prototyping] and not into production.” Moreover, the article reported that, “most A&D work is for non-structural parts” and even the near-term growth curve includes only “structural non-flight parts.” In other words, A&D companies have been slow to adopt the new technology for parts produced in volume, and are afraid to embrace the promise that SLS, and related technologies, offer for rapid prototyping as well as full-rate production.

Is the A&D industry justified in its caution regarding SLS and related “additive manufacturing processes”? One individual read the aforementioned AW&ST article and was moved to write a letter to the magazine, stating that the article was “on the mark” regarding SLS technology. He wrote—

I spent 15 years in the telecom industry … In telecom, rapid prototyping, quick-turn tooling, new product launch protocols and top-notch program management help produce amazingly powerful and sophisticated products, utilizing teams of hundreds of engineers, outsourced to multiple facilities and complex supply chains, for a two-year cradle-to-grave life-cycle device with the durability to be dropped 6feet, small enough to fit in a pocket, and costing under $400. Thousands can be built for the cost of one modern weapons unit.

I returned to the defense industry as part of an outreach program intended to bring in new perspectives … For years … I spoke of SLS, 3DSL, MIMs, 3D Printing and Rapid Tooling. I gave impassioned speeches regarding the benefits of using prototype, dummy and rapid-molded parts for developing assembly process methods during pilot runs. All attempts were met with: “This is the defense industry, things don’t work that way here … we don’t have that kind of time/financing.” Yet, we blew past schedules, dumped tons more money into programs and struggled with quality issues.

It’s pretty clear that DARPA thinks defense manufacturing is ripe for fundamental change, a kind of quantum leap driven by cutting edge technology such as additive processes. Yet even though the benefits of fully embracing such technology are obvious, too many companies prefer to move slowly, one small step at a time. So the question is: where is the leadership that wants to drive the kind of revolutionary change DARPA is looking for? Where are the risk-takers? Where is the company that is ready to dramatically reduce the duration from design to prototype to full-rate production, and that will reap the commensurate benefits?

 

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