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Hi, my name is Joe Kleiss. I'd like to talk a little bit about visualization and how
we've used it here at Rock Island. It's a great tool and it works really effectively
for us and the war fighter.
What we're doing here is using the immersive incapabilities of
visualization
to expand
on what the product idea ought to be.
We use the c_ four which is a four-sided cave
and it's immersive capability to bring the product to the customer
prior to cutting any metal.
Now, that's a really powerful tool from the standpoint that it allows us
to look at the product long before any metal is cut or any metal is bent.
Where do we make the savings come into play?
What we do is we hold design reviews for the course of the process. That process
allows us to bring the customer in, it allows us to bring
the contractor in
and it allows us to bring the warfighter in along with his design engineer to discuss
the product as it goes through the development cycle which is a really
powerful tool.
Now, the thing that happens is is that during these discussions we may find
mistakes. Those mistakes can be corrected in this immersive environment instead of
producing a hardware prototype and then finding out you've got a mistake.
We all know that if you produce a hard ware prototype and then have a mistake, you're
ultimately going to be faced with schedule delay
and schedule cost increase so doing it immersively saves you a great deal of
time and a great deal on your schedule.
Right now we're looking at cost savings in the neighborhood of about four point
four million dollars which is really tremendous when you look at what we're
doing.
The other nice benefit from this is that we also are finding great schedule
savings of about three point eight man years. Now, these will vary depending on the
complexity of the product
but nonetheless
it looks like that's a great savings no matter how you cut it.
Now, the bottom line is a word as the benefit come, the
benefits are for the war fighter.
When the warfighter gets his product in a much timely fashion
with his input right at the very beginning of the process and throughout the
process
that means that when he gets it in the field and he actually has to use his
product it's what he wanted. It's exactly what he asked for because he's involved
in that process all the way through.