Maintenance Strategy, Logistics, and Engineering: U.S. Coast Guard Perspective

摘要

In previous decades, ships were designed as "stand alone" units that were manned to operate independently and perform a significant amount of maintenance with the embarked crew. Finance, supply, maintenance, training and operational procedures were mostly managed by the ship's crew. Because of the complexity of installed systems, changes in contracting and financial accounting, and the need to improve the efficiency of operations, many of these tasks have moved ashore and crew sizes have diminished significantly over the last 20 years. This has driven significant changes to the Coast Guard's maintenance strategy. The key changes include: Centralization and Product Line Management. All maintenance and supply chain management for each cutter class is directed through a "Product Line Manager", who is the single point of accountability and decision authority for each cutter class. Funding, maintenance procedures, parts supply, technical documentation, configuration management, technical authority and contracts are standardized and managed centrally through Product Lines. Support from both organic and commercial resources are prioritized and tasked on a national level to meet the most critical demands of the fleet. Thirty years ago, these same functions were mostly done within a local region and each region had their own contracts and support structure for maintenance. Centralization of these functions is far more effective as all maintenance is done the same regardless of what region of the country (or the world) the cutter is located.