Defence sector: cutting costs, boosting production during recession – Yes, you can!
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עברית (Hebrew)
Vickie Zisman
With the global recession in full swing for 8 years now and no improvement on the horizon, 2016 bearing especially bearish news, the manufacturing sector all over the world faces especially tough choices. It needs to cut costs on all fronts, operating lean and mean, in order to survive. Smart innovative technology is the natural answer. All manufacturing sectors, be it defence and aerospace, gas and oil, communications, energy industry with all its segments, utilities, automotive and all the rest need to find a way to drive down operational costs. One of the spheres where it can be achieved quickly and efficiently is product design and maintenance. To smartly improve the design process, monitoring every design stage for faults and failures, to streamline the maintenance and logistics of the factory operation on any large systems such as aircrafts, can easily cut the costs by up to 40%.
These algorithmic tools started out as a RAMS technology (Reliability, Availability, Maintenance, Safety), standardized to the highest international military standards. The benefit to the client is twofold: first of all, another, external, controller of the design process, offering a greater extent of monitoring and precision, ensuring higher quality product. Second, the huge savings on the process. A full design cycle of an electronic board can cost up to $100k (including hardware and labor costs), a company that designs dozens of boards a year, can easily reduce costs by hundreds thousands of dollars, (in certain instances – even millions!) with a one-time purchase of a relevant software tool. BQR’s clients like Elbit, Rafael, El-Op, Malam-IAI, who have been working closely with the company, can all attest to the optimal cost-effective design and safety process.
However, another crucial aspect to the defence and space sector is the security and sensitive IP protection. For this reason, clients like DSO (Defence Singapore Organisation), Baker Hughes, like to purchase the software and use it internally rather to perform such an analysis by an external vendor.
Furthermore, efficient manufacturing is the natural follow on to efficient design. BQR has managed to develop an innovative proprietary algorithms which smartly streamline the whole production logistics and maintenance operation. This software suite has been successfully integrated in the Israeli Navy, among other customers.
Paraphrasing an old adage, I would say ‘recession is the mother of smart operation’. The defence sector has been known to enjoy budget largess, however now, its companies have to tighten the belt, following the global slowdown and cut throat competition. Governments all over the world are much more careful with their buck, hence to the “lean and mean” has been added another request – smart. The performance demands remain the same or increase, the money to support it – went South. And it doesn’t look like changing any time soon. In this reality, the early adaptors of smart operational tools will be the one surfing the wave to optimally weather the tricky conditions, and actually seeing a significant boost to their business.
Wouldn’t you like to be one?
