Wyle Analysis Results in Safer Armored Vehicle for the Warfighter

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., June 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Wyle experts performed a full-system maintenance analysis for a variant of the U.S. military's Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle resulting in a safer, more cost-efficient maintenance plan for the vehicle.

Wyle completed its Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) system analysis of the MRAP vehicles with a final recommendation summary that could produce significant materials and man-hour savings over 10 years for the military. Since 2008, the company has conducted this and other analyses on additional MRAP variants at the direction of the Marine Corps Systems Command's MRAP Joint Program Office.

MRAPs are armored fighting vehicles designed to combat improvised explosive devices (IEDs), roadside bombs and ambushes, and are currently used by all U.S. armed services serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the first years of conflict in the Iraq war, IED attacks caused the majority of U.S. casualties making the MRAP program a priority for the Department of Defense.  

"We have designed our maintenance program for the vehicles based on Reliability Centered Maintenance analysis and root cause analysis," said Dan Gensch, Wyle's MRAP program manager. "We are streamlining the maintenance process by eliminating unnecessary tasks, essentially making maintenance on these vehicles much easier for the Warfighter."

Wyle's current analysis of a second MRAP variant is nearing completion and analyses of several other variants were recently initiated, or will soon be initiated, by the team.

"Learning the mission of each MRAP vehicle and understanding how to best serve each U.S. military force while performing the task at hand is challenging, but we believe our maintenance analysis is making their missions safer and saving lives," said Gensch.

The distinguishing factor of these armored vehicles is the "V"-shaped hull designed to deflect blasts outward instead of upward into the crew compartment. Depending on the vehicle's Category or mission, their purpose can be performing anything from mounted patrol and convoy protection, to mine and IED clearance and ambulance duties.

During the full system RCM analysis of the initial MRAP variant, the Wyle team evaluated 11 major systems within the vehicle. The analysis began with a few members of the team conducting an extended site visit and meeting with military subject matter experts familiar with the specific variant.

From this meeting the team progressed to the next stage in the RCM process which defines all possible functions, functional failures and failure modes for each major vehicle system. Functions define what the system is designed to do; functional failures explore what might happen if the function were to fail, and failure modes identify the cause of the possible function failure.

After conducting analyses at various military installations and MRAP manufacturing sites around the country, Wyle generated findings and developed more than 300 recommendations to improve the vehicle's maintenance plan.  

Before sending the analyses to the MRAP Joint Program Office, the company ensured that all possible system function findings were addressed and their recommendations were cost-effective, complied with the guidelines of the military Standard Practice for System Safety decision logic (MIL-STD-882D), and could be performed safely by MRAP operators and maintainers.

"Due to the demonstrated success of our RCM process, our team will continue to focus on building a strong customer relationship and new opportunities within the MRAP community," said Gensch. "Our goal is to ensure the Warfighter has the safest, best maintained vehicle to work with."

Wyle is a leading provider of high tech aerospace engineering and information technology services to the federal government on long-term outsourcing contracts. The company also provides biomedical and engineering services for NASA's human space missions; test and evaluation of aircraft, weapon systems, networks, and other government assets; and other engineering services to the aerospace, defense, and nuclear power industries.

SOURCE Wyle