Josselin Droff, Researcher at the Chair in Defence Economics and Benoit Rademacher, Director of Armaments and Defence Economics at the’IRSEM, publish a study entitled« MCO 4.0. The potential of Industry 4.0 technologies applied to the Operational Readiness Maintenance (ORM) of defence equipment »(IRSEM study no. 65).
- 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.
This study is fully in line with the activities of the Chair in Defence Economics. To consult the scientific review and find other work by the Chair on MCO and defence economics, click here.
