The defense industry is faced with the challenge of addressing obsolescence and DMSMS (Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages) issues, which can lead to decreased operational readiness and increased costs. For many aging assets, the OEM is no longer willing or able to produce replacement parts or components.
The reverse engineering and manufacturing services offered by our company involve a thorough assessment of technical data to create complete TDPs (Technical Data Packages) specifically designed for high-quality production. This approach provides several benefits to our customers, including reliable access to high-quality parts and components, cost-effective supply solutions, and improved fleet readiness.
Our end-to-end solutions are designed to address manufacturability prior to production and includes the R.O.P.E. (Rapid Obsolescence Planning & Execution) method and the 5R (Reverse engineering, Remanufacturing, Repair, Replicate, Recertify) Solution. These tools enable us to identify and address potential issues before the manufacturing process begins, ensuring our customers receive products that meet their specifications and are of the highest quality.
The R.O.P.E. (Rapid Obsolescence Planning & Execution) process is a sophisticated approach that involves extensive research into the history of a part, identification of data requirements, and development of a custom engineering solution specifically designed for production. This comprehensive process is geared towards preemptively addressing technical data package (TDP) issues prior to the manufacturing process.
By utilizing the R.O.P.E. process, customers can benefit from a range of advantages. These include significant reductions in lead time and cost of part procurement, as well as increased operational readiness due to more efficient and effective production processes. Designed for manufacturability, the R.O.P.E. process helps minimize supply chain disruptions and enhances overall supply chain management by ensuring that parts are readily available and conform to the necessary specifications.
The 5R Solution of Reverse Engineering, Remanufacturing, Replication, Repair, and Recertification. The 5R solution was designed to address support equipment in various stages of production, maintenance, and repair needs.
Our reverse engineering services offer significant benefits to customers in terms of addressing the challenges posed by DMSMS. By ensuring continued availability, avoiding costly replacements, maintaining system compatibility, and improving reliability, customers can maintain the functionality and reliability of their equipment while avoiding unnecessary costs and downtime.
Ensure continued availability: DMSMS can lead to the discontinuation of critical components, which can impact the availability of expensive and mission critical assets. By reverse engineering these components, customers can ensure their continued availability, allowing them to maintain the performance of their equipment.
Avoid costly replacements: In situations where new replacements for discontinued components are not readily available, customers may be forced to replace entire systems or equipment. This can be expensive and time-consuming. By reverse engineering critical components, customers can avoid costly replacements and extend the life of existing systems or equipment.
Improve reliability: Reverse and value-added engineering can lead to improvements in the reliability and performance of critical components. By identifying and addressing any design flaws or weaknesses in legacy components, customers can improve their overall performance and reliability.
Remanufacturing
Remanufacturing involves the process of repairing, rebuilding, or overhauling a part to like-new condition, returning the item to zero-time. This helps in reducing the cost of procuring new parts, increasing operational readiness, and reducing the risk of supply chain disruption. Our remanufacturing process is designed to meet and exceed OEM specifications, often upgrading existing parts and components to require less human maintenance and extend the product’s life.
By remanufacturing critical equipment, our customers can:
Extend the lifecycle of equipment: Remanufacturing can help restore support equipment to like-new condition, thereby increasing its useful lifespan. This can help the military save costs by avoiding premature replacements and reducing the frequency of maintenance and repairs.
Save costs: Remanufacturing can be a cost-effective alternative to new equipment purchases. This is especially important in situations where new equipment may not be readily available or may be too expensive to procure. Remanufacturing can help the military save on procurement costs while still providing the necessary support equipment.
Handle depot overflow: Remanufacturing can help the military manage depot overflow by providing an alternative way to restore equipment that may have been removed from service or replaced with new equipment. By remanufacturing this equipment, the military can maintain a pool of available equipment that can be used to support ongoing operations.
Ensure equipment availability: Remanufacturing can help ensure that the necessary equipment is available to support military operations. By remanufacturing equipment, the military can avoid supply chain disruptions and reduce the risk of equipment shortages that could impact operational readiness.
Reverse Engineering Laboratory
The advanced technology in our reverse engineering laboratory plays a vital role in the analysis of obsolete parts and materials. The 3D printers, dimensional scanning, and Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) allow us to carry out complex measurements with extreme precision, providing a multi-dimensional understanding of the parts. Our Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) techniques helps provide a common language between engineers, designers, and manufacturers to ensure optimal producibility. GD&T, such as parallelism, runout, concentricity, coaxially, and perpendicularity, enable us to produce parts that meet the highest standards of accuracy and remain in tolerance for manufacturing.
Material identification and scanning capabilities are essential in determining the composition of the materials used in the parts, whether they are organic or inorganic. This information is crucial in ensuring that the replicated parts are identical in composition and properties to the original parts. The latest technology and techniques employed in our reverse engineering laboratory ensure that the parts and materials are analyzed in the most accurate and precise manner, providing a comprehensive understanding of the parts and materials, and ensuring that the replicated parts meet the highest standards.
Our Prototype Integration Facility (PIF) provides customers with the benefits of prototype production, including reduced lead times, improved design validation, and the ability to make changes to the design quickly and cost-effectively. Our PIF also offers the benefits of being able to produce small quantities of parts for testing and evaluation, providing our customers with the ability to validate the design before committing to full-scale production. By utilizing the PIF, customers can ensure that new systems and equipment are designed and developed with a focus on quality, reliability, and performance, helping to maintain a high level of operational readiness through rapid prototyping and testing.
Our collaborative PIF environment for government personnel, contractors, and stakeholders allows us to work together on the development of new equipment. This helps streamline the development process, reduce the risk of errors, and ensure equipment meets the necessary specifications and requirements.
Being an alternate source for parts and components vs the OEM offers several benefits to our customers, including increased competition within the defense industrial base and access to low-cost, high-quality parts and components that were previously unavailable. Our robust Source Approval submission process is used to design parts that meet and exceed OEM specifications, ensuring that our customers receive the highest quality parts and components. With over 100 Source Approvals received in 24 months, our SAR process was developed with producibility and availability of parts in mind, further strengthening the defense industrial base with competition.
Our electronic and electrical manufacturing capabilities include the production of a wide range of products, including circuit boards, wire and fiber optic cable assemblies, and electro-mechanical assemblies, such as test sets, power supplies, and communication equipment. These capabilities offer several benefits to our customers, including reduced lead times, improved operational readiness, and access to high-quality parts and components that were previously unavailable.
Parts Life, Inc. is a certified AS9100D engineering service provider, manufacturer, and alternate source supplier for DMSMS and obsolete replacement components on military systems and subsystems. Our value-added reverse engineering processes address missing or incomplete technical data needed prior to manufacturing. Services, such as R.O.P.E.® (Rapid Obsolescence Planning and Execution) and 5R® (Reverse Engineering, Remanufacturing, Recertify, Repair, Replicate) deliver manufacturable data with source approval to manufacture replacement parts. In our Prototype Integration Facility, parts and components are manufactured and tested for form, fit, and function to ensure each piece meets and surpasses OEM requirements. Our electronic, electric, and electrical manufacturing capabilities include wiring harnesses and electronic test sets.