SCRA’s RAMP System at Anniston Army Depot Produces One-Millionth Part
May 5, 2008
CHARLESTON, SC – May 5, 2008 – SCRA, a global leader in applied research and commercialization services, announces its Rapid Acquisition of Manufactured Parts (RAMP) machined part production system at Anniston (Alabama) Army Depot has reached a major milestone by producing its one-millionth piece part since SCRA installed the system in 1994.
In the mid 1980’s, the Navy and the Department of Defense experienced significant delivery delays for critically-needed spare parts for many of its aging weapons systems. For a variety of reasons, many spare parts had become very difficult to procure from their original manufacturers. In addition, the technical data needed to solicit offers for these parts from new manufacturers was often in poor condition or non-existent. As a result, the lead times to obtain these critically-needed parts were excessive, seriously impacting the readiness of the military’s warfighting equipment.
In 1986 SCRA was presented the challenge of solving this serious issue, with the initial mission of the RAMP program being to develop and deploy technologies to significantly reduce lead times for these hard-to-obtain spare parts. In designing its RAMP solution, SCRA leveraged an emergent international data standard called STEP – Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data – as an enabler for efficiently transmitting technical data from designers and buyers to manufacturers. SCRA was and remains a significant contributor to the development of this standard, which is being used today by many of the largest manufacturers around the world to design and produce their products.
The RAMP program resulted in a significant reduction in lead times for many of the parts needed to restore the U.S. military’s weapons systems to fully operational status. Besides Anniston, SCRA installed RAMP manufacturing systems at many other DOD industrial facilities across the U.S.
As computer technology evolved further during the 1990’s, SCRA upgraded the original RAMP systems architecture to a PC-based manufacturing planning and control system, Plan2Production, which replaced the original RAMP system architecture at Anniston. It is this upgrade that is operational today and which produced the millionth part at the Depot.
This is a major milestone that clearly demonstrates the dedication of a depot team that has supported and used RAMP through the years, said Fred Burns, chief of the computer integrated manufacturing division at Anniston Army Depot.
“The first major SCRA program in the 1980’s was RAMP,” said SCRA CEO Bill Mahoney. “The original program was upgraded to meet our partners’ needs, and its successors have remained operational for almost two decades, with the U.S. military and suppliers still reaping valuable benefits in both mission fulfillment and ROI from this solution.”
About SCRA ( www.scra.org )
SCRA is a global leader in applied research and commercialization services with offices in Anderson, Charleston, and Columbia, South Carolina. SCRA collaborates to advance technology. SCRA provides technology-based solutions with assured outcomes to industry and government, and with the help of research universities like Clemson University, the University of South Carolina and the Medical University of South Carolina.
