Fleetway, a Canadian leader in engineering and logistics support, BAE Systems and Datifex are collaborating to digitally transform complex asset management. By integrating BAE Systems' Prophesea product with Datifex's SeaReady™ solution, Fleetway is delivering a comprehensive solution that transforms how defence organizations sustain complex assets.
With the global geopolitical landscape more turbulent and unpredictable than it has been for some time, nations are under increasing pressure to maximize the operational availability of their critical physical assets.
Failure to do so could put national security and the lives of military personnel at risk – not to mention significantly increasing the financial burden of those assets.
Nations need to establish a digital thread that runs throughout their asset management operations. As such, the key to success lies in connecting sustainment enablers across engineering, maintenance and supply chains – in close partnership with industry.
Data lies at the heart of defence decision-making. For organizations managing complex assets like naval vessels or land vehicles, the digital thread connecting design, manufacturing, operations and maintenance provides the foundation for effective sustainment. This requires a robust system of record that integrates disparate data sources, providing a single, trustworthy source of truth.
Delivering this is no mean feat given that today’s complex physical assets are typically managed through a multitude of systems sitting across different parts of an organization's infrastructure. What’s more, these systems are often unable to communicate with each other, resulting in siloed data and a lack of visibility across assets.
Yet, even if organizations are able to generate a holistic view of asset data, a significant challenge remains; namely, how to quickly extract actionable insights from this wealth of information in a way that unlocks strategic advantage in the most demanding of environments. When planning maintenance periods or assessing operational readiness, how can teams effectively determine the root cause of a particular issue? Or its prevalence across the fleet? How can they collaboratively resolve complex issues? Or deconflict activities during docking work periods?
Finding the answers to these questions in a timely manner can be difficult, yet doing so is critical to ensuring assets remain mission-ready.
For defence organizations, it all comes down to reducing the cognitive burden of managing complex assets to maximize readiness. Leveraging digital solutions to transform how teams understand, communicate and act on asset information can deliver tangible outcomes including:
Of course, this challenge isn’t easy for any one organization to solve alone, which is why collaboration across industry is so important.
The integration leverages the strengths of both platforms to create a seamless sustainment ecosystem and deliver end-to-end asset intelligence. Prophesea integrates and centralizes critical asset data from multiple sources while SeaReady transforms this data into an intuitive, web-based 3D environment that makes complex information immediately comprehensible. The lightweight 3D models are accessible from any device, ensuring that all stakeholders – from contractors to engineers and commanders – can access critical asset information regardless of location.
The solution integrates work packages directly with technical data, mapping engineering changes, defects and maintenance items to their specific locations within the asset model. As a result, users can immediately see not just what needs attention, but precisely where issues are located and how they relate to surrounding systems and components.
By visualizing the material state of assets and providing filtering capabilities based on criticality, system or location, the integrated platform enables teams to identify patterns and optimize maintenance planning. Users can quickly assess the scope of issues, evaluate historical maintenance data, and determine the most effective intervention strategy.
The web-based platform breaks down geographical and organizational barriers, enabling real-time collaboration between distributed teams. Shipyard personnel, maintenance crews, engineers, and operators can share the same visual understanding of asset condition, creating a foundation for more effective communication and coordinated action.
Ultimately, in today’s digital-heavy defence environment, empowering users to easily access and interact with disparate sources of information will be key to success. This is what will enable nations to create shared situational awareness in support of better and faster decision-making.
As defence organizations continue their digital transformation journeys, transforming complex asset management will provide the foundation for next-generation sustainment capabilities that deliver what matters most: mission readiness when it counts.
Fleetway, fleetway.ca
BAE Systems, baesystems.com/digital
Datifex, datifex.com
Corey Kirkhus
Datifex
Director of Business Development
902-580-4577
corey.k@datifex.com
