Navy Tackling Shipyard Inefficiencies That Leave Fleet Lagging

NATIONAL HARBOR,
Md. — The Navy is investing $21 billion in a multiphase program to improve the
efficiency of its government shipyards, which have struggled to get ships and
submarines back into service on time. The program is called the Shipyard
Industrial Optimization Plan, said Steve Lagana, program manager for the plan
in the Naval Sea Systems Command Industrial Division.

Speaking at a NAVSEA
briefing at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space exposition May 7, Lagana
said the plan was developed in response to criticism from Congress, which has
complained about ships and submarines languishing in the yards or unable to get
in for required maintenance. A prime example of the problem is the three Los
Angeles-class attack boats that have lost their certification to sail due to
the overdue maintenance. The USS Boise has been waiting 18 months for its
required yard period.

The plan was
developed by a team of 40 engineers, Lagana said. The first two phases of the
plan were surveys of the yards and detailed analysis of the problems. Those
studies showed enormous inefficiencies created by the physical layout of the
yards, which had facilities providing parts or services to the dry docks in
some cases more than a mile apart.

Lagana showed
diagrams of the existing arrangements at the major yards and the planned
realignments, which would produce more compact and efficient facilities. At the
Puget Sound and Norfolk yards, the facilities serving submarines and
nuclear-power carriers would be separated and combined with their supporting
components.

“This is a whole
new way of thinking about the problem,” Lagana said. Ships in the yards do not
produce a lethal Navy, he said.