Naval Sea Systems Command’s new Acquisition and Commonality Directorate (SEA 06) will aid government and industry as they use commonality in parts to simplify work for sailors in the fleet and commonality in processes to save time and effort while developing technical specifications, the head of the directorate said Monday.
Rear Adm. Tom Kearney, NAVSEA’s deputy commander for acquisition and commonality, said he envisioned his new directorate as a tool and a trainer for others to leverage.
“It’s not SEA 06 that’s doing the commonality; SEA 06 is going to enable them to do commonality. So it’s our job to create the tools, manage the processes, create the links so that the contracts-processing, the parts-buying process, all can take advantage of commonality,” he said in an interview with Defense Daily.
The directorate, which officially launched April 14, pulled John Sofia, former NAVSEA director of systems engineering, specifications and standards, in as the systems commonality program manager, Kearney said. “We’ll have about 10 people that will work with John Sofia on rotating basis to train them up on commonality, to use them to attack specific efforts in commonality, and to send them back eventually to the organizations so they’ll have a culture of commonality.”
The National Shipbuilding Research Program, to which the Navy and industry each contribute about $15 million annually to fund shipbuilding-related innovation, will also fall under SEA 06.
Among the tasks assigned to the commonality directorate is to further develop and maintain the Virtual Shelf NAVSEA uses–a list of components already approved for use. By selecting valves, engines, piping and other hull, mechanical and electrical equipment from the Virtual Shelf, program managers wouldn’t have to wait around for NAVSEA’s engineering directorate (SEA 05) to review and approve a new part.
The commonality directorate has already done “deep dives” in 42 components–motors, valves, switches, controllers and more–to better understand the balance of commonality and the technical needs of the ship programs, Kearney said.
The directorate will also tackle common processes such as welding and painting, which by themselves are simple but have become complicated because each ship class has different standards for both the welding itself and the quality assurance measures after the welding is done, Kearney offered as an example. He noted that prime contractors typically have direct lines of communication between both government and the subcontractors, but the subcontractors can’t always reach government to clarify what is really needed when writing their technical documents.
“One of the areas that’s frustrating industry–and part of my goal in SEA 06 is to help industry to improve their engagement with the government… –the subvendors are the guys that are doing the weldings on the valves and a lot of the piping and the components, and we have a process that’s fairly cumbersome,” Kearney said, adding that the vendor would have to submit a work plan to NAVSEA outlining how the welding would be performed and inspected. NAVSEA then has to review and approve each subcontractor’s plan for each component of the ship being built or repaired, and “that’s taking a long time to get through the loop. So if we can shorten that time by making it more consistent in how we review those processes and give the tools to the subvendors to create a welding process easier, then it should save time and money.”
Kearney made clear that NAVSEA would maintain its standards for “technical rigor” in its engineering practices, but where it makes sense to adopt common practices, he would like to see NAVSEA do so. The ultimate goal would be for a single welder at a yard building multiple ship classes to be able to use one process on all the parts he welds, rather than having to switch between different materials and processes–which slows him down and increases the cost of his training.
Kearney noted the need for balance in this effort–not every component can be common across the entire fleet or else competition would be eliminated entirely, he said. The idea is to “expand and optimize commonality”–he wants to boost the benefits of lowering logistics and training costs, while avoiding problems such as forcing everyone to use the same motor even if one ship class could get by with something smaller and lighter, for example.
He said that the Navy and its industrial base had been addressing commonality for a while now, but in a very disparate fashion–even different offices within NAVSEA weren’t always aware of what others were attempting to do. Kearney said former NAVSEA Commander Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy had begun bringing these efforts together, and when current commander Vice Adm. William Hilarides took over in June 2013, he developed a Strategic Business Plan that centered around reaping the benefits of commonality. Fleet Forces Commander Adm. Bill Gortney wrote all the systems commands a letter last fall to say that variance in equipment had grown too great in the fleet and to ask the SYSCOMs to address the problem; Hilarides had already been talking to Kearney, his NAVSEA vice commander, about creating the commonality directorate, so the two efforts came together nicely, Kearney said.