Naval Science Day 2020
La 15th edition of the naval science day took place at the’Naval Academy, Lanvéoc - Brest Thursday 30 January 2020. Initially driven by the French Navy's desire to raise the profile of its teaching and to raise students' awareness of the challenges of research and innovation for their future careers, the JSN has also become a place for the entire maritime and naval science and engineering community to meet, share and exchange ideas. Alongside students from the École navale, the event welcomes over 200 people every year.
An introductory lecture by Josselin Droff and Benoît Rademacher
Josselin Droff (Researcher at the Chaire Économie de Défense) and the’ICA Benoît Rademacher (Director of Armaments and Defence Economics at the’IRSEM) have proposed a introductory lecture entitled: « Operational readiness maintenance (ORM): economic challenges and prospects« .
The speakers presented to the audience current and future challenges in the MCO of defence equipment with particular emphasis on the technological revolution taking place in MCO. This technological revolution was the subject of a detailed analysis published in IRSEM study no. 65 (To download the study MCO 4.0 click here).
Summary of the MCO 4.0 study
- Le maintenance in operational condition (MCO) of defence equipment is a major a major challenge for the Ministry of Defence, This is due in particular to its operational impact and the associated costs.
- Many initiatives and experiments have been launched, or are in the process of being rolled out, with the aim of significantly improving, or even transforming, the way MCO tasks are carried out, both at the level of the state actors as well as industrial players.
- In particular, they are banking on the potential offered by the technologies underpinning the digitisation of value chains, which cover a very broad spectrum from’massive exploitation of data from defence equipment in service (big data) to the use of robots or drones for inspection and maintenance tasks, not to mention the additive manufacturing (3D printing) or augmented reality (RA) or virtual (RV).
- The purpose of this study is to characterise the impact of these technologies and underlying concepts for the organisation and implementation of defence equipment MCO, in order to all environments (aeronautical, naval and land equipment). To this end, the authors carried out a bibliographical study on changes in practices and on technological developmentss concerned and have led more than one twenty interviews with’state and industry players in charge of MCO issues.
- The results of fieldwork show that, on the whole, the technology clusters identified by the authors have a potential for improving MCO of equipment (improved MCO productivity and service quality, reduced costs, increased availability). However, this potential is not perceived in the same way according to environments, the actors and the technologies identified.
