The UK Navy RAMP Project: improving the spares provisioning process through the rapid acquisition of manufactured parts

This paper reports on a Naval Support Command (NSC) commissioned pilot stud y into the use of a 'production-on-demand' system to reduce the cost of spa res provisioning. The system, known as RAMP (Rapid Acquisition of Manufactu red Parts) is based around the electronic communication of component inform ation using ISO STEP standards AP203 and AP224. STEP AP224 has been designe d to communicate the information required for process plans to be generated for single-item mechanical parts that are to be manufactured by machining, and, given appropriate computer aided process planning (CAPP) software, ca n be used to automate or semi-automate the process planning task, offering considerable lead time savings to component manufacturers, and enabling 'pr oduction on demand', The RAMP process has been tested through the manufactu re of nearly 600 components, all of which were UK Navy inventory components , with information regarding the speed and completeness of the process reco rded at each stage. The scope and results of this pilot study are reported, It is concluded that the adoption of RAMP processes for UK Navy spares pro curement is likely to provide a significant cost and time saving over curre nt procurement processes? and that AP224 has the potential to become the st andard mechanism for component information to be exchanged where process pl anning of mechanical parts to be manufactured by machining is required.