Challenges Facing The Navy’s Ship Maintenance Industry

 

The navy is taking steps to streamline shipyard maintenance times and modernize shipyard infrastructure. But it has a few key challenges regarding achieving ship availability on time. The time it takes to acquire and deliver parts to a shipyard site can cause maintenance delays. These challenges can be overcome by getting parts to the jobsite quickly. Click this to find a list of amazing military boats.

Predictive maintenance

To maximize the benefit of predictive maintenance, the navy must develop effective instruments and tools for analyzing the data. These instruments should allow managers to make more informed decisions. In addition, they must be able to safely transport data back to shore. This requires a large amount of usable data to be processed and analyzed.

Currently, only two percent of all registered vessels use a condition-monitoring program. However, this is the area with the most potential for financial impact.

Cost

According to the navy’s annual ship maintenance budget, ship maintenance costs are increasing faster than the inflation rate. The navy spends $2.1 billion on high-priority maintenance each year, largely performed by ship crews and shore-based maintenance providers in homeports worldwide.

Timeline

The navy is working on cutting the time it takes to maintain its fleet. One of the best ways to do so is to modernize shipyard infrastructure. However, the navy is facing a shortage of workers, which is affecting shipyards’ productivity. The navy is also working to improve its hiring practices.

The navy is facing a growing backlog of maintenance projects. The surface fleet currently has 4,200 days of unfinished maintenance, equivalent to taking 10 ships off the fleet for a year. Meanwhile, the Navy is investing in more complicated warship modernizations and enlisting more qualified shipyard workers.

Challenges

In recent years, the navy ship inventory has changed significantly, and so has the industrial base supporting the fleet. The fleet’s composition will likely continue to change in the next 30 years, impacting the fleet’s maintenance needs. Here are some future challenges facing the navy shipbuilding and repair industrial base.

First, the navy must secure funding for shipyards to support ship maintenance. The navy is heavily reliant on dry docks and shipyards. Additionally, the navy needs to improve workforce training and incentives for shipyard contractors.