Project Participants: Huntington Ingalls Industries – Ingalls Shipbuilding
Project Start: August 2020
The current manufacturing process for nesting plates, cutting plates, and cutting pipe at Huntington Ingalls Industries Ingalls Shipbuilding (Ingalls) result in excessive material waste. Additionally, the internal administrative constraints limit the ability to absorb the fluid nature of production (e.g., nesting that addresses just-in-time schedule requirements across contracts, hulls, units, material types/sizes). The Dynamic Rules Based Material Process project, led by Ingalls, will investigate how to make these processes more efficient.
This project will create a rules-based process for effective consumption of whole material while reducing overall scrap. A dynamic nesting solution will be evaluated with the goal of eliminating risk associated with cross nesting (across multiple bills, hulls or contracts) while decreasing material handling cost. A formal rules-based program will be set up that addresses the handling of excess material. These are expected to add versatility to the processes and minimize manual nesting, touch cost and material waste. Additionally, project will address physical marking for material allocation (cost collection), tracking, and locating.
This project will also examine whether the opportunity exist to connect results automatically (via a digital solution) with other ManTech projects in order to leverage existing technology like “Material Tracking” and “Nested Material Manufacturing Technology Improvement”.
This 25-month effort will be conducted over two phases at Ingalls Shipbuilding. During Phase I, the project team will baseline the current processes, define the future state and requirements, and conduct a market survey. During Phase II the project team will get vendor(s) under contract, develop a test plan, and develop a system prototype. The most promising prototype design(s) will be down-selected, and any required modifications and improvements will be made prior to pilot testing. Upon successful completion of the pilot tests, Ingalls will update the business case, finalize their implementation plan, and develop a final report.
