Manufacturing Support Tools

Project Start: September 2020

General Dynamics Bath Iron Works (BIW) manufacturing processes rely on accurate and reliable data to complete tasks below cost and on schedule. Current processes include unnecessary redundancies, multiple stages of checks, and a large amount of manual effort to ensure the data provided to mechanics is correct and deliverables are accurate and meet requirements. These processes offer a significant opportunity to reduce manual efforts and expedite services and deliverables while improving first time quality.

The primary objective of the Manufacturing Support Tools project is to institute functional tools and integrated data management to best support manufacturing in an effort to expedite tasks, verify status, and validate results.  Three primary focus areas exist to modify and enhance the processes and approaches used today:

• Create central data repositories and migrate data that are used by several tools, ensuring data accuracy and reliability across multiple applications.
• Create a tool suite that is extensible such that it can be adapted to integrate with other types of tools and applications. This would include all interfacing tools, user interfaces, and data management tools needed to enable functionality.
• Create toolsets that improve processes, add automation, and improve data accessibility in order to support internal and external customer requirements.

The primary focus areas described above are related to test and activation activities. However, other manufacturing needs have been identified, such as the ability to create readiness reports, manage lock out/tag out activities, and verification and management of specific design details and installation instructions that facilitate planning, scheduling, construction and testing activities.

The project will be completed in one phase and will include project initiation, process and requirements analysis, development of software architecture, software code development and interface development, data management, functional and UAT testing, and implementation planning.