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Volume 6, Issue 1 | January 2016

The Logista

In This Issue: Defense Logistics, Reflecting on Industry Conferences

Resiliency: The New Buzz Word and what it can do for you

Skip Tourville Rejoins ALE

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) Workshop: March 1-3, 2016

ANNOUNCEMENT: ALE has a Change in Ownership;

Renee Coogan is the New President

On January 1, 2016, Renee Coogan acquired controlling interest of Quality

Aero Inc. dba Acquisition Logistics Engineering (ALE) after founder Charles

Coogan retired from the business.

Renee earned a Bachelor of Science degree from The Ohio State University and worked for the Department of Defense in support of military service members and their families for many years. She has extensive corporate management and human resources experience. Renee joined the company in 2014 as the Chief Financial Officer.

"Renee's contributions to the Business Office and culture of ALE have been significant. I have full confidence in her vision and ability to continue the ALE standards of excellence," said Charles Coogan, who is now enjoying his retire-ment in The Villages, FL.

With this change of ownership, ALE becomes a Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB).

Connect With Us:

WWW.ALE.COM

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Defense Logistics Reflecting on Industry Conferences

By Stephen Brunner, Business Director

I’ve been looking forward to the release of this issue to proudly announce our change

of ownership. As of January 1, 2016, Renee Coogan acquired ownership of ALE and

became our new President. She’s an impressive leader with extensive management

and human resources experience.

In addition, ALE’s Steve Rogers and Rod Benson are presenting two papers and a tuto-

rial at RAMS® this week in Tucson, AZ. They are also both taking the Certified Reliabil-

ity Engineer (CRE) exam; and we wish them the best of luck in that endeavor.

This issue is filled with exciting announcements from ALE as well as two articles that

take a high-level look at where our industry is today regarding attending conferences

and the buzzword of the moment, resiliency.

Thank you for your readership, and enjoy!

Sincerely,

Joe Coogan, CEO

ALE supported the Defense Logistics 2015 event in conjunction

with the Council of Logistics Engineering Professionals (CLEP) on

December 1-3, 2015. This event was a great mix of policy and

forward thinking, as well as addressing everyday issues in the

realm of DoD logistics.

There were a couple of key themes that were presented by the

keynote speakers and discussion panel members:

Sustainability is measured as system readiness across the life

cycle

Resilience is important to building a successful logistics sup-

port system

Information changes the logistics landscape in real time

These themes play a significant role in the current approach to

logistics program planning, implementing, and budgeting.

There was a lot of discussion regarding having to get our hands

around the operating and support burdens associated with cur-

rent and new development programs. Realizing that the DoD

Services’ resources are shrinking, ideas were shared about how

to effectively support the Warfighter in his/her continuing mis-

sions around the globe. There were no definitive resolutions to

these issues, except the realization that the logistics community

must remain relevant and leverage all available means (people,

capabilities, ideas, data, and processes) to achieve our goals. The

Defense Logistics event provided those in the logistics profession

the opportunity to create high performing relationships with

Government and Industry leaders and gain a better understand-

ing of the resources that are available.

One of the most interesting subjects discussed was how to main-

tain and grow the Logistics Engineering capability within the DoD

and its support contractor base. Mr. Lou Sciaroni, AMRDEC Logis-

tics Engineering Branch Chief, provided a case study on what the

US Army is doing to create Logistics Engineers for assignment to

all program offices.

This session was followed by a panel discussion on what can be

done to ensure the DoD Logistics Engineering capability can be

maintained. The panel was made up of senior CLEP representa-

tives who shared what they thought made a good Logistics Engi-

neer and how we can build a professional engineering capability

based on young, sharp engineering students.

The final day of the event included intensive training sessions

presented by CLEP members and senior members of the Logistics

Engineering profession. The three simultaneous sessions were on

subjects that spoke to the everyday logistics practitioner and

were recommended by Stephen Brunner, ALE’s Business Direc-

tor. The subjects comprised “Building an Appreciation for Design

Influences on Sustainment” presented by Jim Martin and Ste-

phen Brunner, “Reliability as the Starting Point for Assessing the

Logistics Support Requirements” presented by James Jones, and

“PBLs to Determine the Best Product Support Strategy” present-

ed by Dr. Wesley Randall. These sessions were very conducive to

allowing for specific questions on how to implement the ideas to

be shared.

Letter from the CEO

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Resiliency: The New Buzz Word and what it can do for you

By Elizabeth Schwartz, Sr. Systems Analyst

Our industry is not unique in the sense that there seems to be a new buzz word every year that be-comes prevalent in conferences, ignites the devel-opment of new analyses, and eventually can be found tucked into solicitations and statements of work. In the past couple of years, ‘resiliency’ has assumed this role. Engineers are programmed to design systems as strong as they can be – the ‘why not’ mentality to incorporating resiliency. If a system must withstand a category 3 hurricane, but can be built to withstand a category 5, why not do the latter? Logically, the counter to designing in resiliency is potentially increased cost. However, when considering multi-million (or billion) dollar systems, designing resilient systems is the wiser path to take rather than saving a small percentage upfront. So, how can we proactively build resiliency into systems? For a prime contractor or subcontractor, how can we meet the customer’s expectations while minimizing impact on contingency funds and profit margins? What the Customer Expects Resiliency evokes an idea of being able to ‘bounce back’ when something unexpected happens. Bounc-ing back, in turn, can have many meanings. Can a system that can be efficiently repaired and a system that can endure destructive onslaughts both be considered to be resilient? This author argues that they can be. Therefore, resiliency, and how it’s incorporated into program requirements, will take on different meanings depending on the customer’s needs. These needs (reparability, surviv-ability, reliability) should be identified early on in a program. Additionally, one of the challenges to being resilient is that design specifications and the intended use of a system, in 21st century defense contracting, do not always align with the actual conditions that systems will be operated in over its life cycle. A system designed for a humid environment may in reality be deployed to a much more arid desert climate. Defined metrics can help set customer expectations for the contractor. Fortunately, conclusions on resiliency can be derived from popular, industry-accepted reliability metrics: failure rate, mean time between failures, operational availability, etc. But there’s more to the idea of having a resilient system than being able to repair it quickly, cost-effectively, and reliably. A resilient system must also be able to survive. Reliability engineers primarily deal with resiliency in terms of survivability by designing in redundancy for critical system functions. This has traditionally been an effective, and acceptable, means of designing resilient systems. If the main system fails, a back-up system can be online in seconds or less. But what happens when the back-up to a system fails? The answer to this question is still being worked on in the industry, and leads to the more interesting research being done today. Self-healing materials, software with greater diagnostic abilities, and robotic systems that perform repairs while in action are all tools that are and will be used heavily to develop systems with a greater degree of resiliency. ►

(Continued on page 4)

Resilience n. | re·sil·ience | \ri-‘zil-yƏn(t)s\

: exhibiting the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens

: exhibiting the ability of something to return to its original shape after it has been pulled, stretched, pressed, bent, etc.

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Skip Tourville Rejoins ALE

Maurice A. “Skip” Tourville, a systems and electrical

engineer with over thirty years of professional experi-

ence, has re-joined ALE. Skip was a member of ALE’s

staff from 2003 to 2004.

After earning his BSEE from The Ohio State University

and being commissioned as a US Naval Officer, Skip

completed his MS in physics at the US Naval Postgrad-

uate School, and then served 5 years at Headquarters,

Naval Nuclear Propulsion (NAVSEA 08) on the tech-

nical staff of Admiral H. G. Rickover. Upon fulfilling his

naval obligation, Skip spent the next 20 years at Bell

Laboratories where he

worked on projects

ranging from integrated

circuits to nationwide

wireless networks, retir-

ing as a Bell Laboratories

Distinguished Member

of Technical Staff in

2001.

As a Research Leader at

Battelle Memorial Insti-

tute in Columbus, Ohio, Skip supported projects for

the Department of Defense, the Department of

Homeland Security, and the Federal Reserve.

Skip credits his first tour at ALE with training him on

front end Systems Engineering approaches that can

have significant impact on supportability of complex

systems with long lifecycles.

“Skip brings significant experience in taking an end-to-

end Systems Engineering view of all types of

programs,” explains ALE’s CEO, Joe Coogan, “and we

are happy to have him back at ALE”.

How to Provide Cost-Effective Resiliency Plans Acquiring Program Managers and engineering product and services firms should consider resiliency during the design phase, along with traditional logistics engineering requirements. The following guidelines are suggested to help steer firms in a direction that will result in implementing cost- and technically-effective resiliency plans. Define a robust supportability plan. If resiliency is defined as returning a system to its original condition, one obvious way to do

this is to be able to repair a system effectively. Supportability, therefore, plays a major role in meeting resiliency requirements. Supportability plans define maintenance, technical manuals, and spare parts management, among other areas.

Be adaptable. To be resilient, a system needs to be usable for the long-haul. Being adaptable enables a system to outlive techno-logical advances by being modifiable to accept those advances. In this case, resilience is actually a hyper-resilience; where the original system or function may have not just become as good as it was, but was improved from its original state by being adapt-able to change.

Be open to using state-of-the-art technologies. Materials engineers are creating revolutionary products with self-healing charac-teristics. Architects are using new techniques to design kinetic structures to shift form to brace for a changing environment. Being on the look-out to incorporate new, yet tested, materials and designs can improve resiliency and survivability while positioning your products or services as leading edge in the industry.

Final Thoughts Resiliency is a hybrid of reliability, redundancy, and survivability. It will likely not supplant the traditional logistics engineering re-quirements, but instead be used as a metric in addition to them. This is a welcome buzz word, as it re-enforces the need for integrated logistics engineering on systems and equipment; which ultimately may be the buzz word’s most lasting contribution.

(Continued from page 3)

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Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

FMEA Workshop March 1 - 3, 2016 | Crane, IN

Understand the objective and approach for performing product

FMEAs

Develop the ability to define requirements for and support a

FMEA effort

Learn how to apply FMEA to improve

products and life cycle

support planning

REGISTER NOW!

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