My name is Michael and I am currently undergoing research into the application of Supportability Analysis into the Manufacturing Industry and would like a moment of your time.

With the UK in a recession it has been noticed by the UK Office of National Statistics that it is causing job losses in all sectors. As a result, many employers are going to greater lengths than in the past to hold on to skilled manufacturing staff, because they know they will struggle to replace such expertise when the upturn comes. With the acknowledgement that there is a greater requirement to retain skilled staff, more resources have been placed into finding other means to pull ourselves out of the financial down turn. A proven technique to provide optimised Operational Performance at Minimum Whole Life Costs in to implement Integrated Logistic Support (ILS).

Integrated Logistic Support (ILS) was established by the US Army to ensure that the supportability of an equipment item is considered during its design and development. The technique was adopted by the UK MOD in 1993 and made compulsory for the procurement of the majority of MOD equipment. In a commercial company this technique may be called product support, customer service or many other similar names.

Quorum has considerable in-depth experience in providing cost-effective and innovative supportability solutions spanning the whole of a products lifecycle, regularly on the most challenging of projects. The core activities of Quorum have been focused on supporting clients providing capabilities to the defence industry and following an internally conducted study it is considered that the non defence sector would benefit from the systematic approach applied, resulting in improved Value For Money (VFM).

VFM is fundamentally realised through the development and implementation of designs influenced by analysis of potential failures and their mitigations, optimum schedules of maintenance and prediction of spare part and resource requirements; complementary to this is system safety analysis to ensure that the system will not cause harm to itself or those that interact with it.

It is this structured approach that ensures maximum operational availability at optimum Through Life Costs (TLC). The iceberg model is used to illustrate the value of such analysis by visually representing the procurement costs, which unfortunately too often are the only consideration, compared with the through life cost of support.

The principle is to influence the 'design for support' but the same approach is often applied to existing systems where the objective is to 'support the design'.

Prime candidates in the commercial sector that would benefit from this approach are Capital Equipments (CE), characterised by their long life and/or high value (in both financial and availability/up-time terms).

In the discipline of Integrated Logistic Support (ILS) there are 13 principal domains that should be considered at the start of any project. Depending on the project requirements some of the elements may be tailored out; one size does not fit all. Many of the domains below will be familiar to industry but may have a different title:

Through Life Costs
Availability, Reliability and Maintainability
Maintenance Planning
Supply Support
Manpower and personnel
Training and training equipment
Technical Publications
Human Factors Integration
Facilities
Package, Handling, Storage and Transportation
Support and Test equipment
Obsolescence
Disposal

Quorum achieves its objectives by applying a wide array of experience and knowledge from our disciplines, teamed with complementary engineering backgrounds. Quorum ensures the correct high calibre employees are matched and allocated to specific project tasks, and are supported by the skills and experience of the whole of the Quorum team.

We are now in a position to expand into other business sectors and are researching where we, as a leading ILS provider would be best suited and bring the best value for money.

Would it be possible for you to help me with a questionnaire to help me develop my research? Would you like to know more about ILS and/or Quorum?

Apologies for the manor of my approach and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your time.

It is this organized approach that guarantees greatest operational accessibility. I think the principle is to impact the configuration for support. But the same methodology is regularly connected to existing frameworks where the goal is to backing the design. Read more here for business ideas and planning.. theideasfactory.com