Electronic Military & Defense Annual Resource

3rd Edition

Electronic Military & Defense magazine was developed for engineers, program managers, project managers, and those involved in the design and development of electronic and electro-optic systems for military, defense, and aerospace applications.

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Techniques Solving The Repair-Or-Replace Dilemma Repair depots provide a compelling alternative to OEMs trying to decide between replacing defective/obsolete electronic products and repairing them in-house. By Steve Walley W hen service is required for RF and microwave electronic products, some original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) find it more convenient and economical to replace the product rather than repair it in-house. For these manufacturers, the time and money required to process authorized returns, hire repair technicians, buy test equipment, and manage the quality of repaired products simply aren't worth it. This is especially true in the defense sector, where stringent performance requirements must be met. Specialized repair depot technicians are trained to work with high voltages and hazardous chemicals. Another drawback of in-house repair is that it can take an OEM's focus away from its core competencies and impede research and development. When design engineers are doubling as test and repair technicians, there often isn't much time left for new product development. For these reasons — and more — companies are finding repair depot services a favorable alternative to repairing or replacing defective or obsolete products. Conserve Resources, Lower Costs Companies that manufacture specialized products and provide high-complexity, low-volume contract manufacturing services are often well equipped to handle repairs and upgrades of products in their niche. Many of these companies have teams of dedicated test engineers and technicians specifically trained to identify the causes of a product's failures and perform the repair quickly and efficiently. In addition, these highly trained engineers and technicians can also generate detailed failure reports that are used to analyze 46 Electronic Military & Defense ■ www.vertmarkets.com/electronics quality and track failure trends — ultimately leading to design changes that improve manufacturability. In most cases, microwave and RF products can be repaired for a fraction of the replacement cost by a qualified repair depot. Plus, outsourcing noncore competencies such as repairs can reduce overall manufacturing costs by as much as 20 percent. RAND's Project Air Force helps shed some light on the repair/replace decision with a mathematical model for determining when the cost of repair exceeds the cost of replacement. AN/ALQ-172 Pave Mint: A Repair Depot Success Warner Robins Air Logistics Center (WR-ALC) faced the repair-or-replace decision for the U.S. Air Force's (USAF's) AN/ALQ-172 Pave Mint Countermeasures System. The AN/ALQ-172 Jammer provides the USAF's B-52H, AC-130U, and MC-130H aircraft with electronic countermeasures (ECMs) against airborne and groundbased fire-control radar systems and associated missiles. When WR-ALC found that the required models of the system's very-high-power TWT amplifiers (TWTAs) were no longer being manufactured, they requested proposals from the industry's most prominent manufacturers. Shortly after Teledyne won the contract, the TWT manufacturer partnered with dB Control to serve as the authorized AN/ALQ-172 Pave Mint TWTA repair depot. High-voltage power supplies (HVPS) sent from WR-ALC, by way of Teledyne, to dB Control are repaired, refurbished, and final-tested. The units are then shipped to Teledyne for final integration. With every repair, dB Control forwards a detailed failure report to the WR-ALC engineering team for quality analysis. Since 1999, the authorized depot has repaired approximately 1,000 power supplies with a return rate of less than 1 percent, helping aircraft like the B-52H remain in service for decades to come. Third-Party Repair Depots On The Rise In a recent Blumberg Advisory Group analysis of more than 100 electronics, telecommunications, wireless, and computer OEMs of various sizes, more than two-thirds indicated that they outsource some or all repairs to third-party providers, many of whom were required to develop superior problemsolving skills to remain competitive. In the defense sector, Bloomberg Businessweek reports that, in 2010, private con-

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