By Vicky Falcón
NAVAIR Public Affairs Office

A recent AIRSpeed Black Belt project is bringing NAVAIR engineers a software tool they need at reduced cost and improved efficiency – with a total savings of more than $344,000 per year.

Many NAVAIR engineers use The Mathworks, Inc. software products, such as MATLAB, to do data analysis, visualization, algorithm and application development.

“It’s hard to imagine doing my job without it,” said John Leonard, Flight Dynamics Engineer within Flight Dynamics (AIR-4.3.2.4). Leonard, who tests flying qualities of aircraft for flight clearances, describes MATLAB as an engineering, programming, mathematical tool that a large percentage of engineers in the industry use. MATLAB has also become the standard tool taught at engineering schools across the country.

“MATLAB allows me to do analysis on a large scale,” Leonard explained. “I can do many calculations and analysis quickly, which means a fast response to fleet needs.”

Although the product itself is an industry standard and indispensable for many within AIR-4.0 and 5.0, the process for software purchase and maintenance had grown cumbersome and costly.

“Since 2001, the process of purchasing and maintaining MATLAB data analysis software tools has been stove-piped, redundant and not cost efficient,” said Cindy Keeney, the NAVAIR AIRSpeed Black Belt who led a project called, “Integrate Management of MATLAB Data Analysis Tools” last year.

According to Keeney, the results of that stove-piping have been unnecessary labor costs, excessive purchases of MATLAB software, higher costs per license and increased cycle time.

“In FY04, NAVAIR spent approximately $340,000 in labor costs to procure $618,000 of The Mathworks, Inc. products – a labor/material ratio of 0.55,” explained Keeney. “NAVAIR did not receive any discounts from the vendor on new product purchases, either.”

Bruce Feldman is branch head for Strike Aircraft Propulsion and Air Vehicle Subsystems Flight Test (AIR-5.1.6.14) and maintains the MATLAB portal and corporate licenses.

“The prior process went through the standard purchasing route,” said Feldman. “There were lots of steps because IT (Information Technology) waivers were required. An IT waiver could require a Flag or SES signature and then would have to go through contracts, including sole-source justification. The whole ordering process could take weeks.”

“But now,” Feldman continued, “the process is virtually painless.”

First, the team negotiated a five-year Indefinite Delivery/ Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with The Mathworks, Inc., with IT approval for the length of the contract. That approval eliminated completing and processing over 800 IT approval forms.

By eliminating excessive forms and unnecessary, redundant approval processes the team was able to streamline the purchase process and make it consistent across NAVAIR.

“We were able to obtain AIR-2.0 approval for Ordering Officer warrants,” said Keeney. “This enabled purchases over $2500 under the same contract using a Purchase Card as the payment method. This streamlined the purchasing process and reduced the number of personnel processing orders from more than 50 to three.”

The result was a 67 percent reduction in the cost of labor.

“We also had a ‘quick win’ by negotiating a 25% discount on new software purchases for NAVAIR and other DON organizations into the new contract,” explained Keeney.

According to Keeney, The Mathworks, Inc. had not been viewing all of NAVAIR as one organization – now they have grouped not only NAVAIR, but all of DON for the discount.

Another quick win, according to Keeney, came from promoting and utilizing the MATLAB Community of Interest (COI) to post unused licenses.

“In the past we made redundant purchases within NAVAIR because there was no mechanism to post unused licenses,” said Keeney.

The new process has created a Type II savings of $344,000 per year. Type II savings are actually waste elimination where assets/resources are freed up to be reassigned to other value-added work and/or potential future savings.

Jay Lichtenstein, TheMathWorks National Account Manager, has seen a vast improvement over the previous method in which NAVAIR procured software with his company since the process was put in place in December 2005.

“Turnaround time for government users to receive products has been reduced from weeks, and in many cases months, to just days,” said Lichtenstein. “Since I deal with many other government agencies I would highly recommend similar contracts where appropriate.”

The “Integrate Management of MATLAB Data Analysis Tools” Black Belt project team included: Stephen Cricchi, 5.1; Jackie White, 4.0/5.0; Kathy Steele, 7.2; Kathy Mattson, 2.5; Tracy Wathen, 5.1; Bruce Feldman, 5.1; Steve Naylor, 4,3; Erin Strand, 2.5 WD; Mary Jacobs, 2.5 WD; Alita Yates, 2.5 WD; Kathy Kogel, 10.0; Al Morrissette, 5.1; Mark Webster, 7.2; Liz Medved, 7.2 and Gerald Hartley, 4.10 WD.

For more information about NAVAIR AIRSpeed, go to http://www.navair.navy.mil/navairairspeed/.

For more information on using the Mathworks, Inc. contract and the NAVAIR network licenses, go to the MyNAVAIR Mathworks/MATLAB USER’s COI or the NAVAIR NMCI MATLAB share folder at: \\naeapaxrfs01vb.nadsusea.nads.navy.mil\navair\PAXR\APPS\Matlab\User_Forms_and_Information.