Mission Ready: How to Modernize Military Equipment Maintenance in the Organic Industrial Base

Say goodbye to spreadsheets, clip boards and sticky notes. Digital transformation is now front and center as the military services and their industry partners explore ways to enhance mission readiness by providing data insights on the status of their assets at depots and military facilities, and help improve their ability to proactively repair and maintain equipment to keep them operating at the highest levels.

“Game-changing software and advanced analytics have arrived on the scene,” said Karen Miller, Senior Director and General Manager for Honeywell Forge Performance+ for Defense. “Secure, cloud-based software innovations can help the defense industrial base and discrete manufacturing operations improve asset uptime, boost operational excellence, reduce maintenance and operating costs, and foster collaboration between the assets, site managers, and staff.”

In fact, studies show that asset-intensive manufacturing organizations with heavy investments in facilities and equipment can realize 30-50% reductions in machine downtime, 10-30% increases in throughput, 15-30% improvement in labor productivity and 85% better forecasting. And that’s just for starters.

Meet Honeywell Forge Performance+ for Defense

Miller and her team are actively working with several organizations in the defense industrial base and manufacturing world to deploy Performance+ within their operations. “These customers play important national defense roles,” she said. “They can use our software to improve supply chain resilience and meet their most critical commitments to the military units and warfighters who rely on them.”

Honeywell expects to receive Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) authorization and certification by mid-2025. In the meantime, the company is raising awareness of the breakthrough Honeywell Forge software platform within the defense community and seeking more early adopters.

“Performance+ for Defense will deliver enormous process improvements, reduce energy consumption, enable predictive maintenance, increase worker productivity, and much more.” Miller said. “Performance+ for Defense can help defense depots and manufacturers inspect and secure asset health in real time, enhance cybersecurity for operational technology and meet their most critical commitments – efficiently, securely and affordably.”

Performance+ for Defense is an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solution built on the proven Honeywell Forge Performance+ platform already deployed in other asset-intensive industries worldwide. It enables the organic industrial base, MROs, and manufacturing organizations maximize the performance of their assets, employees and site operations. Honeywell has more than a century of domain knowledge focused on improving industrial processes.

Empower Defense Operations with Precision and Performance

Until now, depots and bases have often relied on separate tools and manual processes to coordinate vital operations.  Performance+ for Defense uses a cloud-native Software as a Service (SaaS) model to combine industrial functions related to assets, workers and sites into a single, unified platform. As a SaaS platform, it will allow for consistent feature releases and cybersecurity updates, reducing the burden on customers.

According to Miller, “We developed this solution with the specific needs of defense agencies and their industry partners in mind. It offers consolidated performance metrics, actionable alerting and decision-making recommendations to optimize labor, inventory and energy costs and ensure that every resource is used efficiently.”

Performance+ for Defense features robust access control enabling easy and secure contractor and cross-domain access. It also gives users the ability to quickly develop custom analytics, Miller explained.

“These ecosystems are very complex and often struggle with many data silos,” she said. “Performance+ is agnostic to legacy systems and can integrate with any environment reducing the need to ‘rip and replace’ large amounts of infrastructure by integrating with existing IT and operational technology.”

Performance+ for Defense monitors, maintains and analyzes operations, Miller continued. “Our platform monitors operations in real-time to ensure efficiency and the highest product quality. It maintains mission readiness with predictive precision maintenance solutions that improve uptime and extend asset life. And it uses powerful analytics to drive continuous improvement, uncover trends and identify opportunities.”

As the defense MRO and manufacturing ecosystems evolve through digitalization, Honeywell Forge Performance+ can help key players drive better performance by: 

• Creating a Data-Centric Infrastructure: The platform enables data-driven decisions to modernize infrastructure and foster a digital-first culture. By making data accessible, secure and interoperable, decision-makers can use information in real-time to better position assets and equipment and reduce cybersecurity incidents. This transition from paper-based to digital processes empowers organizations to make informed decisions.
• Optimizing Skilled Employees: It optimizes and digitizes industrial facilities to improve operational performance. By providing Asset Performance Management, Workforce Intelligence and Operational Excellence, these solutions help employees focus on their core tasks. This leads to process improvements, reduced energy consumption, optimized labor placement and better cross functional communications.
• Establishing Resilient Supply Chains: Performance+ addresses the critical need for resilient supply chains and domestic production and industrial base capabilities. It increases capacity, identifies bottlenecks quickly and improves resource management. This is essential for reducing material costs and repair times and mitigating security threats.

“Honeywell Forge Performance+ has roots in Honeywell’s unique domain expertise as both a leading aerospace and defense company and premier supplier of industrial software solutions,” Miller said. “This is more than just a performance management tool. It’s a comprehensive solution that drives operational efficiency, ensures asset readiness and provides actionable insights so aerospace and defense organizations can achieve their mission objectives with greater precision and reliability.”