Testers to save $13 million for the US Air Force AWACS maintenance
5 May 2004Test & Measurement
Security Services & Risk Management
The US Air Force projects it will turn a small $485 000 investment for four PinPoint II Testers, from DiagnoSYS, into $13-plus million in cost avoidance to re-host more than 100 previously developed software programs for repair of its AWACS fleet.
The cost avoidance will come in lower re-hosting costs, according to the AWACS support equipment program manager, USAF, Hanscom Air Force Base.
"Re-hosting test programs to conventional functional automatic test systems (ATS) has become quite cost prohibitive at a time when large budgets no longer exist," the manager said. "With the PinPoint, a smaller, more economic workstation, we have found it nicely satisfies the requirements for testing our digital workload, taking only a few days to write a test program versus the months we had originally anticipated. The savings are going to be enormous, and we are going to get a technical capability that is on par with any other system on the market."
"We have more than 100 digital TPSs that need re-hosting, and if we had to use the 'conventional' functional test systems, it would have cost in excess of $150 000 for each item re-hosted and would take anywhere from eight to 18 months per item to re-host," he said. "With the PinPoint II systems, we will turn each TPS around in a matter of weeks at one-tenth the cost of conventional ATS. We are projecting a 20-month project, and that is where we will achieve our savings."
The PinPoint testers are one of the systems replacing an older AWACS legacy test system that is no longer fully supported by its manufacturer. The PinPoint testers provide a means to prevent repair workflow downtime due to premature legacy system failure, a situation unacceptable to AWACS.
"The simplicity of the programming for PinPoint allows us to spread the work out to more people, getting the job done faster," he continues. "We have a large fleet of AWACS aircraft and need to keep them flying. Electronic parts fail, so it is up to us to make sure we find the causes of the failures, make the repairs and get those items back into the Air Force's supply system as quickly as possible, available to the flight line mechanics."
"While PinPoint II will not handle every test application required by AWACS, its existing capability produces life-cycle cost savings of millions of dollars, while providing the military with a leading edge technology replacing older, legacy test systems," he concluded.
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