The Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) announced
today that four industry teams have been selected for the Affordable
Multi-Missile Manufacturing Program (AM3). Awards totaling $32 million will be
negotiated with the four teams. The teams selected are:
. Loral Vought Systems, Dallas, Texas (lead), with Loral Aeronautronic, Rancho
Santa Margarita, Calif.; McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, St. Louis, Mo.;
Northrop Corp., Hawthorne, Calif.; Rockwell International, Duluth, Ga.;
Honeywell, Clearwater, Fla.; LORAL Fairchild Systems, Syosset, N.Y.; Loral
Infrared Imaging Systems, Lexington, Mass.; Lucas Aerospace Power Systems,
Aurora, Ohio; Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, N.Y.; Westinghouse
Electronic Systems, Baltimore, Md.; Automation and Robotics Research
Institute, Ft. Worth, Texas; CTA Incorporated, Englewood, Colo.
. Martin Marietta, Orlando, Fla. (lead), with Martin Marietta Laboratories,
Moorestown, N.J.; Alliant Techsystems, Hopkins, Minn.; Loral
Infrared Imaging Systems, Lexington, Mass.; Lockheed Artificial
Intelligence, Palo Alto, Calif.; General Electric Corporate
Research & Development, Schenectady, N.Y.; Hewlett-Packard
Company, Orlando, Fla.; Enterprise Integration Technologies, Menlo Park,
Calif.
. Raytheon, Tewksbury, Mass. (lead), with Amber Engineering, Goleta, Calif.;
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Penn.; Deneb Robotics, Auburn Hills,
Mich.; Kearfott, Black Mountain, N.C.; Motorola University, Mesa, Ariz.;
Photronics, Hauppauge, N.Y.; Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; SRT
Electro-Optics, Birmingham, Ala.; STEP Tools, Troy, N.Y.
. Texas Instruments/Hughes Missile Systems Company, Lewisville, Texas (lead),
with Motorola, Scottsdale, Ariz.; National Center of Manufacturing Sciences,
Ann Arbor, Mich.; Parametric Technology Corp., Newport Beach, Calif.;
Science Applications International Corp., McLean, Va.; Stanford University,
Stanford, Calif.; Mentor Graphics, Wilsonville, Ore.; Merkle & Mears,
Stratford, Conn.; American Competitiveness Institute, Wyncote, Penn.;
Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.; Texas A&M, Ft. Worth, Texas.
The goal of the AM3 program is to demonstrate the feasibility of reducing the
unit cost of ongoing missile production programs by 25 percent and reducing the
development and production cost for new missiles and major upgrades by 50
percent. A major theme in the program is to optimize cost across a mix of
missiles to compensate for the loss of economies of scale as individual missile
procurement quantities decrease.
The program challenges industry to demonstrate innovative cost-reducing
concepts that will achieve the kind of cost and time savings in the tactical
missile sector that world class commercial manufacturers have realized in other
sectors. To make acquisition innovations possible, the program will use a
special authority given to ARPA to conduct prototype development and
acquisition experiments outside the normal constraints of the Federal
Acquisition Regulations.
The four teams selected today have identified missile portfolios which
collectively span the entire range of tactical missiles planned for development
and procurement in DoD's Future Year Defense Plan. The proposals identify
advances in design and manufacturing processes and systems which, in
combination with acquisition reform initiatives, are expected to achieve the
AM3 cost savings goals.
Phase one (Concept Definition) of the program will be a nine-month study to
accomplish detailed design of the enterprise processes and systems defined in
the proposal, and provide detailed analysis of the impact on target missile mix
cost.
Phase two (Concept Validation) will be a 15-month demonstration program
involving simulation and modeling, business practice demonstrations, design
exercises, component level manufacturing and qualification tests to show the
feasibility of innovative concepts and links to program goals. At the end of
Phase two, two of the four teams will be selected for continuation into Phase
three, which involves implementation of pilot manufacturing enterprise systems
and demonstrations in manufacturing of tactical missiles for delivery to DoD.
The program will be managed by an integrated team of ARPA and tri-Service
representatives. End-of-phase reports, open industry meetings, and
commercialization of resulting tools and software will facilitate technology
transfer to other manufacturing sectors.
