Editorial: Beating the bathtub | ADM Sep 2010

Katherine Ziesing | Canberra

With our feature on sustainment this month, I thought of my bathtub; a bathtub curve to be exact. The bathtub curve is widely used in reliability engineering.

It describes a particular form of the hazard function which comprises three parts:

• The first part is a decreasing failure rate, known as early failures.

• The second part is a constant failure rate, known as random failures.

• The third part is an increasing failure rate, known as wear-out failures.

The bathtub curve is generated by mapping the rate of early failures when a capability first introduced, the rate of random failures with constant failure rate during its useful life, and finally the rate of wear out failures as the product exceeds its design lifetime.

The bathtub analogy is derived from the time versus failure graph used to map this phenomenon that looks a lot like a bathtub with steep curves either side of a flat bottom.

It’s cheap to support a capability when it first arrives, so the curve trends sharply downwards.

There should be a high reliability rate as the system is new and has yet to experience any fatigue issues and associated costs are mainly in training.

Running costs are relatively flat for the life of the capability, on average.

But as the capability ages and becomes obsolescent, we approach the other side of the curve.

For example, the Super Hornets are at the top of the bathtub, the C-130s floating along the bottom and the F-111 has reached the end of the bathtub.

But realising when the upward curve kicks in is a blend of art and science.

While the DMO does its best to smooth the transition from one curve to the next, there is only so much flattening one can achieve.

The new batching approach for ship repair and maintenance is one such strategy.

There is no way you can flatten the dollar and time costs of major repairs, they simply have to be planned and budgeted for.

But the ADF has a habit of holding onto technology or platforms long after they have hit the upward slope of the bathtub.

The costs of keeping an outdated capability in service far outweigh their perceived operational usefulness.

The urge to hang onto the familiar, not knowing when the replacement will appear, is strong (and sometimes warranted).

There needs to be a better mechanism to identify when a capability has reached its use-by date, and plan its replacement schedule carefully, before it crests the edge of the bathtub and comes crashing down the other side.

And the winner is…

Gregor Ferguson | Sydney

At the time of writing, Australian voters were still waiting for a result from last month’s Federal election.

Interestingly, defence and security policy didn’t attract much political attention, nor afford much political leverage.

Certainly, defence policy played little part in the major parties’ election campaigns, although border security was a key battleground which seemed to find both major parties in violent agreement with each other.

The ALP simply reiterated its existing policy, set out in last year’s Defence White Paper.

Beyond saying that the current DCP is unaffordable, the Coalition didn’t engage seriously in a policy debate but it will re-examine policy and budgets if it wins office.

The Opposition promised to transform the DMO into a truly autonomous executive agency of government, and spend some $4 million setting up a Defence Industry Advocate “to assist the Australian defence industry in their dealings with DMO.”

While this idea has considerable appeal (there is no shortage of war stories from frustrated and disgruntled industry executives trying to do business with the DMO), the role of such an advocate needs to be considered in more detail.

Whichever party is declared the winner will need to grapple with the defence budget.

Even if the Strategic Reform Program delivers everything required, this is probably not enough beyond the forward budget estimates to fund all the White Paper commitments.

The DMO is the body tasked with delivering defence projects, and is widely blamed if they go wrong.

But it carries only part of the responsibility for the way projects are set up in the first place, and for the way in which they engage (or don’t, as the case may be) with local suppliers.

Most of the issues which taint DMO-industry relations have their genesis well beyond the boundaries of that relationship - mainly at the front end of the capability development process, though industry can be its own worst enemy if it doesn’t perform and then doesn’t understand why the DMO becomes risk-averse.

A Defence Industry Advocate might help improve things – so would appointing a permanent Defence Industry Minister.

ADM has argued before that Australia needs such a person and whichever major party forms the new government we urge the incoming Prime Minister to make this appointment, and make it permanent.